Unknowns
by Nox Drake
Summary: Voldemort isn't the only dark wizard of our time. Most of them are kept quiet from the public by the Ministry. The Immortals, a secret society of wizards gets them out of the way. Their youngest members are now starting their first years at Hogwarts.
1. Chapter 1

The train whistled and jolted to a start. Inside, it was filled with laughter and tears, good byes and hellos. Children hung out the windows to accept good bye kisses from their parents and to wave to their siblings. The train picked up speed and soon was out of the station. The children quieted down and all the noises slowed to a low buzz.

In compartment 4, the shades were drawn and the four occupants did not speak to each other. They sat in silence, waiting for...something. A flash of light illuminated the shaded parts of the room and then, suddenly, there was a man. "Hello girls." He said with a smile. His voice was crystal clear and seemed to sing to them playfully. "Your education as witches will begin as soon as you enter Hogwarts. Your knowledge of these arts is vital to the survival of the Immortals. Without it we will lose the battle between the Dark wizards. Do you understand me?" Each girl nodded sincerely without taking their eyes off him. "Good. You will report back to us once every week. Your birth marks will burn when you are needed. To report, there will be a hidden staircase in the library, near the restricted section it is marked with our symbol. Once you are all inside you will be able to report. Good luck, and remember only Dumbldore can know of this." With no further instructions, he disappeared in another flash of light.

The four girls sat in silence for a few more moments."Finally, he's gone, man I hate Garb." Nox said crossly. Nox had long raven black hair; but with blood red bangs, the same shade as her eyes. "Dude, I know!" Leva exclaimed across from her. Like Nox, Leva had black hair; but it was short and her eyes were electric blue. "You mean dislike, right?" said Luna humorously. Luna was the proper one, she had long blonde hair, usually pulled back into a ponytail, her eyes were shimmering silver. Arma sat next to Nox chuckling softly. Her short auburn hair framed her face. Her eye lids blinked over her dusky orange eyes.

Why? You ask do I point out all four girls' eye color? Because, their eyes are very unique, as you can already tell. But the thing that always unnerved people, was that their pupils were very small, which made the color stand out more when added to the fact that they were all bright colors.

These girls were very special. They had powers that the other immortals did not. (The immortals were a secret organization of very powerful witches and wizards that had special gifts corresponding to their birth animal. Each member had physical features of this animal, not to mention very pointy ears.) They did not know of these powers yet, and so did not know the real reason of their presence at Hogwarts.

Just then, a girl, about their age, slid the door open. She was already wearing her wizards' robes and had very bushy brown hair. Behind her stood a rather sad looking boy. He was very pudgy, and carried himself gingerly, as if he thought he would break himself. "Have you seen a toad? Neville here has lost his. By the way, my name is Hermione Granger, what's yours?" She looked at them with her lips pressed tightly together, but her eyes shone with friendliness non-the-less.

"No, sorry." Luna said very kindly. "But my name is Luna." She then proceeded to introduce each girl in turn, ending on Arma. "Oh well, that's alright, nice to meet you anyways." Hermione smiled at them before turning and walking back down the narrow train corridor. "If you find him, please tell me. His name is Trevor. " The boy called Neville almost pleaded before hurrying off to catch up with Hermione.

"A toad huh?" said Nox with giggled. "That's interesting." "Your face interesting." Arma said sarcastically. "Oh! You wanna go!" This was routine for the two of them. Nox made fun of someone, Arma made either a "Your face" or a "Your mom." joke at her, and then Nox would issue a "threat" in the ghetto style with it all ending in laughs. Leva stood up from her seat and then crouched down to pull out her trunk. After unclasping it she flipped the lid open and began to shuffle around inside. There were shirts and robes and other such articles of clothing mixed with her cauldron and magical materials for school and entertainment. From the very bottom she managed to pull out a large deck of cards marked "exploding decks".

With a bit of difficulty, she pushed her trunk back under the seat and sat on the floor where the other three were already waiting.

While they chatted about what Hogwarts was going to be like, Leva set the deck on the floor and they all began to construct a card castle. "What houses are there again?" Nox asked as she carefully placed a card horizontally on top of two vertical ones. "Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Gryffindor." Luna answered adding two of her cards to lean on top of Nox's. "Which one do you think we'll be in?" Leva asked. "I hope we're all together." said Arma. She just managed to place another horizontal card onto the castle before it exploded in a flash of sparks crackling noises.

From under Luna's seat a small toad jumped out and gave a croak of surprise. The four heads in that room turned towards it and Trevor realized that he had been spotted. "Hey look a new friend." Luna said picking him as he made an escape toward the door. "Let's take you back to... Neville was his name?" The toad seemed to nod at her. She looked back at the other girls and they all headed out the door in the direction Him and Hermione had gone. They could see them at the very end of the car, Hermione had just walked into a compartment and out of sight. But Neville was still standing just outside the doorway.

They reached the compartment, greeted Neville quietly and looked inside. On one side, there were two boys, one of them had fiery red hair, and the other's was Raven black and unkept. Hermione was sitting across from them with her wand pointed straight at the raven black haired boy's nose, where there sat a pair of O shaped glasses. The bridge of his glasses were thickly taped together from, they guessed, many accidents of a young boy.

"Reparo." Hermione said while giving her wand a sort of odd flick. Instantly, the tape on the boy's glasses sprung to life. They unwrapped themselves and disappeared with a pop. Underneath, the bridges were unbroken and the boy took them off to gawk at the magical reparation of his glasses. He then placed them back onto his nose and opened his mouth to say something.

"Hey that was really cool!" Arma burst out and the inhabitants of the compartment looked up in surprise. "Gosh Arma, just go and interrupt them why don't you?" Nox scolded her with sarcasm.

"Oh hey you guys what's up?" Hermione asked them pleasantly. "We found Trevor,he was hiding in our compartment." Leva answered and Luna half lifted the upper hand that was keeping Trevor still. She handed him carefully back to Neville and then proceeded to apologize for the interruption and then introduce the four of them to the two boys.

"Er... I'm Ron Weasley." The boy with the red hair introduced himself. "And I'm Harry, Harry Potter." said the boy with the newly repaired glasses. Something about the name rang a bell in the girls' minds and they looked at each other quizzically.

"Dejavue." Leva said with a slow, humorous tone. "Any thing off the trolley dears?" An older witch pushing a cart with several types of interesting candies and sweets had stopped behind the girls, not being able to get through, and smiled at them. "YES!" Leva jumped up excitedly. "Oh boy." Luna said rolling her eyes. After Leva had gathered as much candy as she and Arma, who she made help her, could hold, Nox pulled out the purse where they kept all of their money and paid. They had decided to chill with Harry and Ron for a while instead of going back to their own dark compartment.

"So what are your favorite quidditch teams?" Ron asked them with immense curiosity. "Bulgaria!!" Arma exclaimed dropping the sweets onto the floor where a few paper plates sat barely holding the contents Leva had dropped on them. "Cauldron cake!" Nox threw herself on the piles of candy and snatched up four scrumptious looking cakes. She handed two of them to Luna and started on one of the other two herself.

Leva ferociously bit off part of a licorice wand and nodded in agreement with Arma. "Ha! Ireland is so much better!" Nox laughed after swallowing the last bit of the first cake. Luna raised her hand as she chewed her cauldron cake in an attempt to agree with Nox. "Gosh Luna, we're not in school. Talk out of turn for once." Arma scolded.

They spent most of the ride talking about mysterious deaths that happened in the mountains or in other places where creatures of the dark were kept hidden from muggles. Most of the sweets had been depleated by now and the paper plates were now being used as frisbies.

"Well my dad told me about this one muggle couple who crashed into a tree on their honey moon near the black forest. They were alright, but completely lost, they spent the rest of their days wandering aimlessly in the forest. I think they were found near the center, mutilated horribly, but their hearts were the only thing missing." Ron stood on his seat fingering the make-shift frisby in his hands as he told the tale. "That's not at all disturbing." Nox said in a morbidly sarcastic tone.

"Your sure they weren't just attacked by animals right?" Harry asked hopefully. He still wasn't quite used to the idea of magic, and the thought that this magic was being used for such grotesque purposes scared him.

"An animal would've eaten the rest of their bodies, not just the heart."Luna said gravelly. "Most of the things in that forest aren't just animals, Harry." An uncomfortable black silence settled into their hearts as they grew silent and subconciously turned away from eachother.

The silence was broken by a voice from behind the door. It was muffled so they could not make out what was being said, but they could tell that the voice was coming from a young boy, most likely talking to two others. The six children watched as their door slid open to reveal a small boy with bleach white hair sleeked back from his face. Behind him stood two larger boys of the same age with pudgy ape like faces.

The first looked around the compartment resting his pale eyes on Harry first. "So your Harry Potter." He sneered before turning to Ron. HIs sneer widened. "And let me guess," he looked Ron up and down. "red hair, hand-me-down robes, you must be a _Weasley_." Ron blushed scarlet and looked away.

"Something we can do for you..._cuz_?" Nox asked from his left making him jump and turn to face her. "Nox? What are you doing sitting with these..." he motioned to Harry and Ron. "Vermon?" Nox put on a false smile that didn't reach her eyes and answered. "Well you see, I just have this really soft spot insects and rodents you know, there just so," She faked a sob and held her hand over her mouth. "_heartfilling_." Her hand fell away from her mouth, curled into a fist and rested against her chest.

The boy half glared at her with a look that said 'your not funny'. Nox let out a sigh and her smile fell into a poker face as she rolled her eyes. "This is my cousin Draco Malfoy, and these, _Draco_, are my _friends_... get used to them." Her poker face fell again into a cold glare and Malfoy uttered no more protests and simply backed out the door, closing it behind him.

Ron turned to Nox after he sat back down with a bounce. "Your related to Malfoys." He sounded cold. "Yup, meet the family huh?" Her tone confused Ron. "So, wait, you... don't like the Malfoys?"

Nox waved her hand in a 'so-so' motion.

"Even though they're family?"

Nox shrugged. "Can't choose your family can you? But, yes, they still are family, so I don't _hate_ them. Malfoy is actually very nice when he's not around his other friends or at least that's how he used to be..." She trailed off in a reminisent tone.

"I didn't know you were related to anyone here..." said Arma. "Why didn't you tell us?" Leva rolled her eyes. "_Because_... we aren't supposed to know eachother's other family members, remember?" At these words Harry looked up confused yet again. "Wait, aren't you guys friends?" He looked between the four of them as they nodded. "Were you friends before you met here?" They nodded again, not sure what he was getting at. "But, then why aren't you allowed to know eachothers family? is it a weird club rule or something?" Leva suddenly realized what she had said and blushed with embarrassement as the other three girls glared at her.

The girls had met eachother at the Immortal meetings they had attended with their parents. They had also seen eachother in their training and made friends, but it was a rule to not discuss extended family members so they would not be in danger.

"Uh... yes!"said Leva not sure what else to say. "We call ourselves the...Immortals." The others glared at her even harder and she cringed away.

"Sorry." Luna said sweetly. "But she wasn't supposed to _tell_!"At the last word she glared extra hard at Leva making her blush and bow her head in shame.


	2. Chapter 2

The train screetched to a stop and the students exited talking amongst themselves about the new school year. Leva and her friends, including Harry and Ron, followed the other first years to a half giant who Harry introduced as Hagrid. They followed him into a fleet of boats which sailed on their own across the lake toward the castle. Below the surface of the dark water, Leva caught a miniscule movement which was followed by several large bubbles. They broke the surface, sending ripples to beat against the sides of the boats. Up ahead Hagrid had stopped them to look down into the water as Leva was now. She stared into the very center of the ripples. Slowly, as the last ripple faded, a scene played itself out on the still waters. She watched as a black figure lifted its arms toward her. The figure's eyes opened to glowing yellow slits and a series of runes lit up around its body. Leva leaned in for a closer look and then felt arms clasp her waist.

She looked up from the water scene and realized that she had almost fallen out of the boat before Luna (who had been sitting next to her) stopped her and was now pulling her back up. "What the hell were you doing?" Luna asked when they had both sat down and the boats continued moving. "I saw something in the water." Leva said in excitement. Nox and Arma leaned in to listen, their eyes bright with expectation. Leva told them of what she saw in great detail. Nox's brow furrowed and her eyes stared into space as she thought over Leva's explantion. Leva questioned her about it but was only answered with a muttered "Dejavue". The girls grew quiet and withdrew into private thoughts.

The boats docked and the first years were ushered into a high ceilinged hall where they were told to wait. During this time, they were introduced to a few of the castle ghosts including a poltergiest by the name of Peeves. Eventually, a long nosed, tight lipped, witch escorted them into the great hall where they would be sorted into their houses. The great hall was so large it could hold to inner city houses with more than enough room to breath. There didn't even seem to be a ceiling, it simply opened into the sky. As the stars blinked down at her, Nox wondered what would happen if it were to rain. Behind them, a girl bragged loudly about reading something from " Hogwarts A History" about this ceiling, which was enchanted to mimic the real sky. Nox was vaguely aware that it was Hermione, the girl from earlier who was talking. Names of students were called up to the three legged stool on which stood a moldy old hat. The first student who was called up sat on the stool and the woman, Professor McGonnagall was her name, placed the hat on her head. After a minute or so, the hat opened a hidden mouth disguised as a rip and shouted "HUFFLEPUFF". Professor McGonnagall then proceeded to announce the students and one-by-one they all sat on the stool and were sorted into their houses. With each new student, the house that was called would clap encuragingly and invite the small first year to join them at their house table.

By the end of the sorting, Nox had joined the Slytherin table, Luna the Ravenclaws, Arma the Gryffendors, and Leva the Hufflepuffs. Arma was laughing with Harry and Ron who had been sorted into the same house. Next to them were Ron's brothers, the twins Fred and George who were talking excitedly with their friend Lee Jordon.

Luna sat at the Ravenclaw table talking avaidely to another girl over proofs and other things that were much too old for them to be discussing.

Leva had found a friend by the name of Fidel Jones and they sat discussing different cat breeds and their favorite animals, which were cats.

Nox was stuck at the Slytherin table where she completely ignored Malfoy, still being angry with him from earlier, and contented herself with talking to a girl named Tempest Kilokov and a boy named Ryan Doolb about how stupid people could be.

After the food had been eaten and the plates magically cleared, Dumbledore gave a speach concerning rules, old ones reanstated and new ones that were the result of some student's mischief from last year. Arma got the feeling that most of those were directed at the Weasely twins. To the four girls' interest, the third floor corridor was pronounced out of bounds and they made a mental note to inform Garb during their first report.

The students were then sent to bed and the prefects led their house first years to the dormitories. Luna was led to a large wooden door with no handle and no keyhole, just a knocker in the shape of an Eagle. A voice was heard reciting a riddle which Luna guessed you had to answer correctly in order to enter. One of the prefects answered the question in no time and soon the first years were filing into a large room that was furnished with soft chairs, tables, and a fireplace. Not to mention a tall statue of a woman wearing an odd hat. There were two doors that she guessed led to the different dormitories. She watched as a prefect motioned first to the left door and then the right telling which one was which. The right was where the boys' dormitories were held and the left was the girls.

Up in one of the school's many towers, Arma was being directed toward a life sized painting of a lady in a large pink dress. As they approuched, she turned to them and asked for the password. "Caput Dragconis." Said one of the prefects. Arma saw that it was Percey, another one of Ron's brothers, she had met him at the feast and descided that she did not like very much, infact not at all.

Meanwhile, Nox was pulled down into the dark dungeons in front of a large expanse of blank wall. A prefect, who happened to be standing next to her, shouted what seemed to be a password, and the bricks on the wall rolled themselves out of the way. They opened into a high ceilinged room lined with stone walls that were covered by bookshelves. The furniture included a matching set of black cushioned seats and couches that circled around a fire. The room was lit by green lamps hanging from the ceiling. At the far end of the room were two staircases that led to the dormitories. Boys on the right and girls on the left.

Off somewhere in the vast castle, Leva was being led somewhere by her prefects as she talked excitedly with her new friend Fidel. She came to a door that was somehow concealed and was somehow opened either by a password or some complicated yet special way. Inside, Leva settled down on her bed with Fidel on hers and they entertained themselves by beating out the song "Eye of the Tiger" with great accuracy. Down in the dungeons, Nox had pulled out her Lyre and was plucking a "House of Wolves" out while her friend Tempest sang it and Ryan attempted to scream it out. Arma, up in her tower, was fiddling a folk song while watching the twins trying to out jig eachother.

Luna was twiddling her fingers on a piano that just happened to be in her dormitory as a decoration. Her roomates were sitting on the closest bed and were singing along (they were playing songs from random Disney movies).

Far off from where the girls resided, a figure walked, alone, in the Black Forest of Germany. The figure was a woman, if you were to lay eyes on her, you would say she reminded you of a sparrow. Her hair was light brown speckled with dark brown. Her nose stuck out like a small beak with a feminine touch. Her eyes were beetle black and her ears were pointed to a tip. She scanned the clearing she had just fought her way through, debating on wether to walk through or around it. She could feel a melevolent aura emiting from the very earth in that clearing, And in the center sat a large boulder, carved into it were thirteen different symbols. Seven of the symbols were scortched and part of the rock below them was darker than the rest of the boulder. The symbols, she knew, were of alchemic importance. They were transmutation circles, used in alchemy experiments. However, she also knew that before alchemy was invented, these symbols were used as sacrificial markings. There was an ancient evil buried here and the markings were there to ward off those who would awaken it.

Her eyes leaped away from the stone when she heard a rustle in the brush behind her. She turned just in time to avoid a black mass throw itself at her to tackle her to the ground.

Deep underneath the earth, a woman sat in a high backed seat. She rested one of her legs over the arm of the chair and leaned her back against the other. In her hands, she held a glass orb. She stared into it and watched as one of her puppets attacked the intruder. She knew that the woman was sent by the Immortals. They had believed she was dead long ago after they had dispelled her from their precious circle of elders. She had fallen in love with a demon and made love to him. Her child was born half a demon, and no matter how human he looked, he was considered an abomination. They had ordered her to kill her own child, but she refused. When they had expelled her, she had fled with her child into the slums of london.

After finding someone who somewhat resembled her, she had altered the girl's appearance and DNA into an exact copy of herself. Then, she had left her mark on the girl so that the only smell was the smell of london and, knowing that when a person died, so did their aura,she erased it. Using her powers, she enslaved the girl as a puppet and staged her own suicide by jumping off a building. The body that had landed was splattered enough that there were no questions raised when the muggles had proclaimed it to be her. Her and her child came here, where she had adopted the name, puppet alchemist, from the local villagers surrounding the forest. And here she was now, her childsent off to school not wanting him to go uneducated, and her watching the demise of one of her traitor students.

She had been the one to murder all those people, or rather her puppets, which were simply bodies of the victims she had salvaged from one of the murders. She had cleaned him, patched him back up, and enslaved his body. Once a week she fed him two drops of her own blood mixed with a glass of gin in order to keep him alive. Occasionally, she kept another body for a new puppet.

In the orb, the immortal girl was being over come by her puppet. He had forced her to the ground and was now using his own hands to tear open her skin and rip out her still beating heart. She rythed in agony until the last heart string had been broken. Her blood had gushed from her open chest into the thick tangles of grass on the forest floor. Her eyes stared blankley throught the forest roof into the sky. Above, the stars twinkled and searched for their lost child.

The puppet stood with the heart in his hands and brought it to the large stone. He placed it on a small ledge jutting from the stones side beneath one of the unscorched transmutation circles. Deep in the earth below that stone was sealed an evil power. The Puppet Alchemist wanted that power, and was using the hearts she stole as a sacrifice in order to awaken it. Her puppet pulled a hidden knife out of his coat and held it above his head in his bloody hands. He swung it down and pierced the heart dead in its center. Blood gushed onto the stone and sizzled to a vapor before it could touch the ground. The transmutation circle burst into flames and the immortal's cries could be heard on the wind for anyone who would listen. When the gush of the blood weakened, the heart's flesh began to melt into the stone. It sizzled and steamed until you could see nothing but a dark patch of miscoloration. A light shone through the other symbols like a ripple. Silently, the ledge was absorbed into the stone and jutted back out beneath the closest untainted symbol.

Above and below and all around the hogwarts castle, the immortal's cry resonated through the walls echoing from stone to stone; but it only peirced the ears of six people. In unision, they all tried to block the sound from their ears and automatically turned south east, where the sound had come from. In his office, Dumbledore sat at his desk, covering his ears with his wrinkled hands. Finally, the cry faded away into the howl of the wind and those who heard, stopped a moment, ignoring the concerned faces of their friends, and touched their hand to their heart.

Nox stood up and absentmindedly announced that she would be retiring for the night. Leva, Arma, and Luna did the same and soon all four had fallen into a deep but troubled sleep. _They looked up to their teacher, Carmender. She returned their gaze of wonder to them individually as they sat indian style among the wild flowers. Nox noticed the bright colours of the flowers surrounding them; but stared intently at the black rose bud directly behind Carmender. She looked back up into her teacher's black eyes. Her beack like nose was just below them. Nox turned to her other classmates. There was Leva, Luna, and Arma as usual; but a few others were joining them today aswell. Sitting next to her was Raine, he had a medium sized button nose just as she did, but his eyes were golden instead of red. On his shoulder, Nox could see four black dots resembling a paw and one line each branching off from them. This was the mark of the wolf. She bore one similar to it, however, there were two dark curved lines beneath it. She was a wolf as well, only different, her three best friends were just the same. Raine noticed her staring at him and gave her a smile. She returned it willingly and directed her attention to the child on his left. _

The bed creeked loudly as Nox sprang bolt upright. She was drentched in a cold sweat and was breathing heavily. The other girls in the room were still fast asleep as if nothing had happened. _But nothing had_. Nox told herself it was just a dream. She gasped when without warning, a burning sensation flashed across her stomach where the mark of the wolf could be seen. Garb was calling her to report with others. Grudgingly, Nox dragged herself from the covers and enfolded herself in her night robe. Slipping her bare feet into her favorite pair of slippers, she made her way down to the common room and out into the cold corridors of the dungeons. Up in Gryffendor tower, Arma had felt the same burning sensatio on her ankle. Imprinted there, was a pair of red reptilian wings engulfed in flames. This was the mark of the dragon, but different just as Nox's was. The same event awoke Leva. Her mark, which was on her left shoulder, was the mark of the tiger. It consisted of a horizontal oval surrounding a smaller, vertical one. Beneath it were four bold dots of which had a line branching off from each of them. Begind the thick wooden door of the Ravenclaws, Luna awakened much the same way. On her back was the mark of the griffen. It was two large gold feathered wings. Thin curved lines blew away from them, giving the illusion that the wings were flapping.

Meanwhile, back in the Slytherin dormitories, Malfoy woke in his bed with the burning urg to use the toilet. Groggily, he got out of bed and headed down to the common room. Surprisingly, he was met with the back of Nox as she left the common room in the middle of the night. _Now what is she doing?_ He asked himself. Out of curiosity, he followed her out, keeping his distance so as not to attract her attention. He followed her down the dungeons to the stairs and up into the entrance hall. She didn't stop there but continued on to the moving stair case. Some how he managed to occupy the same set of stairs as they moved with them as passengers without her notice. (he did not know, but her mind was still focused on the dream she had woken from) They let off at the second floor where she unknowingly led him into the library. Finally, seeming to rouse from a reverie, Nox heard the second set off footsteps behind her. Just in time, Malfoy darted behind a nearby book shelf and when she had been satisfied, continued to follow her keeping at least one bookshelf between them. She stopped at the very back of the library, so close that Malfoy feared he would have to follow her into the restricted section. _Not that I'm afraid._ He thought to himself. _I've just heard that Filtch makes most of his rounds in there._ He watched as Nox removed three seemingly identical books, rearanged them, and placed them back on the shelf. There was a low rumble as the entire bookshelf shook and then swung outward opening into a dark flight of winding stairs. With out even the slightest bit of hesitation, she desended the stairs and disapeared into the blackness. The bookshelf swung back to it's usual resting place, hiding Nox from view. Malfoy snuck out from behind his hiding place and made his way toward the shelf Nox had just disappeared behind. However, he stopped when he saw that the books she had removed and replaced flew out of their positions and reshuffled themselves, and then rested back into their original positions.

Cautiosly, Malfoy approached the books, not sure if Nox would return shortly or not. He stared for a long while at the books and suddenly noticed that, if rearanged, the markings on them made a picture. He moved them around just as Nox had. The three books, now in the proper order, depicted a flying pheonix encircled with a ring a fire. Malfoy noticed the intricate details of the pheonix, and was so entranced by it, that he jumped in surprise when the shelf swung open again. He peered into the blackness and, taking a deep breath, began the decent of the stairs. He stopped near the top where he had full view of Nox, Leva, Luna, and Arma sitting in a circle on the floor around a low table supporting a single crystal ball.

Nox sat between Leva and Luna crossing her legs indian style. The girls avoided eachothers' eyes which told Nox that they had all had similar, if not the same, dreams. In the center of the table, the crystal ball began to glow and the girls looked deep into it. They watched as an image of Darnen, one of their teachers, instead of Garb wavered into view. "Hello" said Darnen. "I have sad news." The girls looked around at eachother. They already knew what had happened but didn't wish to hear it. For hearing it would make it final. "Your teacher Carmender is dead. We don't know how yet, but her aura has been exstinguished and you all know what that means." Nodding, the girls lowered their eyes to the table. Darnen noticed this and inquired as to what had happened. "Well..." Leva started. "I had this... dream..." Luna spoke up over her. "Actually sir, it started with her having this vision in the lake." Darnen narrowed his eyes to Leva. "Tell me what you saw." He said in a soothing, but comanding voice.

"I saw... a figure..."She strained to remember exactly what she had seen. "It was a woman... no the shadow of a woman... she was holding her arms out like this." Leva demonstrated by stretching her arms and fingures out, as if she were controling a marionette. "Then I saw her eyes open. They were glowing... yellow. And then I saw runes... norse I think. They started glowing over her entire body." Leva traced her fingure down her arms and legs and up her neck to her cheecks. "They ended at the corner of her eyes." Leva fell silent and the other girls waited for Darnen to say something. "Interesting." Was his only response. "I think," said Arma. "That we all had the same dream. About Carmender." Darnen looked up at her from the crystal ball. "What happened in this dream?" Nox answered this question. She explained the dream in full detail, and when she had finished the other three confirmed that they had had the same dream as well.

Darnen fell silent for a long period of time. The room was completely silent save for the breathing of the enhabitants. Finally, Luna spoke up. "What is it Darnen? What does this mean?" He took a deep breath, as if making a final descision of what he should tell them. "A while ago, around the same time you were born, there was an elder that went horribly rotten. She tainted herself in the worst possible way." The girls held their breath and focused entirly on their teacher. He continued. "She fell in love with a demon, an innocent love at first. The other elders tried to save her from this relationship, but she wouldn't listen to them. They had a child, an abomination. It was hideous and gave off a vile aura. The elders worried that when it grew up, we would not be able to control it and it's true demon would break free. If that happened, then we could be in grave danger. They ordered her to despose of it, somehow, but again she wouldn't listen. The demon had disappeared and so she fled into the london slums. There she commited suicide by jumping off of a building. For all we know, the child is still alive. We believe that they are in your school somewhere." He stopped and turned to Leva. "Your vision, being a shadow, must have meant that it was her child that killed Carmender, or that her child will rise from hiding and attempt revenge on the immortals. We must be careful." Nox rubbed her chin in thought. "Is the child a boy or a girl?"

"We do not know, we never saw the child." Arma glansed at Nox, who returned it, and then looked back at Darnen in confusion. "But then, how do you know that there was a baby?" Darnen shrugged. "I do not know, Arma. You would have to ask Martek, he told me of this, and I heartily believe him." Martek was one of the oldest elders. He was considered the wisest and most trusted. Darnen was not an elder. He was meerly a teacher like Carmender and Leva and Arma's parents. Luna and Nox no longer had parents. They had left on one of their missions six years ago and never returned. Since then, Nox and Luna had been looked after by Ermma, one of the elders.

"What about our dream?" Luna asked, pulling everyone out of their thoughts. "I beleive that your dream was a sight. Sights are dreams that show what has, is, or will happen. In your case, it showed what had happened a few ours ago. Basically all it was telling you is that Carmender died. Nothing else really, just that solid fact." The girls nodded in understanding. In the crystal ball, Darnen turned to speek to someone who the girls could not see. He nodded and turned back to them. "I am sorry girls, but I will have to cut off our meeting here." The crystal ball clouded over and the room fell silent again.

"He's not telling us something." Said Luna. Arma looked up confused. "What do you mean?" She asked. "Well," Luna began. "How they actually be sure that the... ex-elder, is dead. I mean, if she was an elder, it would be easy for her to fool them." "How is she supposed to do that?" Arma asked disbelievingly.

"Well, there are a number of ways. She could've staged her death."

"But what about her arua? The elders have senteries on everyone's aura's."

"Do you even know what those senteries are?"

"No."

"That's what I thought. The senteries aren't people, the elders have this special orb, they can search for anyone's aura, and if it's gone, that means that they are dead."

"How do you know?"

"I've seen it."

"Well either way, if she were still alive, so would her aura."

"Not if she found some way to erase it."

"And how are you supposed to do that?"

"I don't know! She was an elder, so obviously, she's smart enough to find away."

"But she wasn't smart enough to stay away from that demon!"

"Yeah well, those are different smarts!"

Arma opened her mouth and took a breath to say something but Nox stopped her. "I agree with Luna." She said. Arma gaped at her, not finding this fair at all. "There is no garenty that she's dead, unless the elders found her body, confirmed that it was 100, with out question, hers and then burnded it." Arma saw their point and the room fell silent once again. "There's something else." Leva said, she was staring off into space and seemed more like she was talking to herself rather than the others. "The child. They seemed so sure that she had one, but, if they never saw it, how would they know that it was hideous? And how would they know that it's here?" "And how would they be able to kill Carmender if it's here?" Nox added. "There is something they are deffinitely not telling us." The girls decided that it was time for them to head back to bed and started up the winding staricase.

A few minutes later, Nox reached the Slytherin common room. It was still dark in there and no one seemed to have woken from their slumber. Her foot lifted and touched the first step that led to her dorm when some one grabbed her wrist. She twisted around to face Malfoy. "What do you want?" She growled. She yanked her wrist from his grip and he gave her a smile. "I know your secret." He whispered. "What secret?" Nox was sure she knew, but was carefull to not say tell him anything that he didn't already know. "Don't play dumb, I'm talking about your little band of good wizards, the immortals. Your one of them, a long with your three friends. You know just how much my father hates the immortals, he could disown you." Nox returned his smile. "I couldn't give a rat's ass about what your father thinks Draco, or about being in your stupid family." Malfoy's smile grew wider. "Well I wonder what would happen of Dumbledore found out that you were out after hours." "Dumbledore already knows, but I'm sure he will be glad to know what _you_ were doing up Draco, I'll be sure to tell him." Malfoy's smile disappeared so fast Nox hardly saw the transformation. "If you do I'll make your life hell." Nox only smiled wider and wished him a good night. She knew that he couldn't do much of anything to make her life hell, since so much of it happended outside of school. She unfolded the covers on her bed, layed down, and quickly fell asleep.

Rorrim sat with his hands folded against his mouth. His black hair stood on end in spikes in the back of his head. Nox and the others often teased him for that, calling him names like "kockatoo" or "chicken butt" because that's what it reminded them of. Ironically, his animal was the pheonix. The pheonix also happened to be the crest of the immortals, because it symbolized rebirth. On his hand was an etching of a pair of flaming wings. In the sunlight they flashed oranges and reds, the other children would often entertain themselves with it, if the lessons got too boring.

Rorrim seemed absorbed in what Carmender was telling them, so he did not notice Nox's staring. On his left sat Leva, she was making faces at Arma from behind Carmender's back. Leva let the corners of her mouth rest from her fingers stretching it in odd directions. Her electric blue eyes met Nox's and she gave her a cheesey smile. In response, Nox pulled down her lower eye lid and stuck her tongue out at her, knowing that Carmender wouldn't see. On the other side of Leva sat Coro, he and Leva were usually together.

Coro, like always was eating a juicy red apple. The sun was reflected in his goggles that he wore over his short black hair. Coro's mark was that of the Raven. It was a black swirl with thick lines branching away from it to represent feathers. Over his shoulder hung a brown leather bag, which was his hiding place for his apples. Nox watched as Leva casually leaned back and reached into his bag, silently retrieving one of them. She only caught his attention when she took a loud crunchy chump out of the apple and, with bits still in her mouth, she gave him a bright smile and returned her attention to Carmender. This sort of thing would happen during all of their lessons with Carmender and wether she simply didn't notice, or chose to let them be, none of the children ever knew.

Rose was the next student in the circle. She was a rabbit. No one had seen her mark, so the others guessed that it was in an emberassing place and soon tired of asking to see it. Her hair was completely white and her eyes were beetle black rimmed with red. She was the sweetest, most innocent of the students and so did the least amount of chores. Her body was week and she often got sick, so the other students had unofficially named it their duty to do their best to protect her. Usually in cases like bundling up when it was cold and keeping her away from snapping plants or snakes or other such natural things. However, May, her best friend was the one who was most likely doing the saving.

May was a fox. Her mark could be seen under her left ear. It was a small silver dot enshrouded in two thick white curved lines. This, Nox was told, represented the fox's stealth. And boy was May stealthy. The others entrusted her with the sneaking and pinching of Ice-cream, popsicles, or other such sweet treats. Arma sat next Luna and the circle ended again with Nox. Slowly enough that it took a moment for Nox to notice, shadows gathered over head of them. Carmender stopped speaking and looked up at the sky. The students stood up wearily and turned to their teacher for advice.

Rose screamed and collapsed. May caught her just in time before she hit the ground. Nox stared at her teacher and friend with wide frightened eyes. She stared straight into Carmender's blank unseeing eyes and felt as if she were lost in a deep black abiss. After seconds that felt to her an eternity, her eyes lowered to the bloody hole that had been carved into her chest. Nox could see through the hole to the other side of the circle where the black rose had been growing and was now a full flower. The blood continued to flow from Carmender as Nox stood enranced by the rose. She felt as if she couldn't move, even though she wanted to, needed to. She needed to run, to get away from it. What it? Nox wasn't sure, but she was sure that she could feel it coming closer and closer every second she stood there...


	3. Chapter 3

Part 3: Taking Time

The next morning at breakfast, schedules were pasted out and the girls met at the lake to compare their classes. Arma had invited Harry and Ron to join them. She had also asked Hermione but she politely declined, preferring to sit in the proper place to eat breakfast. Ryan and Tempest had come skipping along with Nox and Leva had Fidel. It had been Luna's idea to eat by the lake, and Padma Patil followed her there, hoping to meet the famous Harry Potter. "So what classes do we have in common Harry?" Padma asked, batting her lashes as he approached her and Luna. "Um..." Harry blushed and turned away. He saw Nox and Leva linking arms and skipping toward them. Fidel had linked arms with Leva, and Ryan and Tempest had linked with Nox. Together, they made one long line of skippers singing "We're Off to See the Wizard". (If you don't know what song that is you need to crawl out from under your rock before the world decides to run a marathon and leave you behind.) "You guys are dorks!" Arma shouted to them from Harry's right. "Yeah well, so are you!" Nox shouted back.

After the singing group had joined the others, they each pulled out their assigned schedules to compare them. After some checking, booing, cheering, debating, looking over, and more cheering and more booing, they had come to a conclusion. Gryffendors and Hufflepuffs would have charms together first. While Slytherins and Ravenclaws were in Herbology. According to their schedules, their classes changed from day to day throughout the week. Two houses would share one class period with another, switching off and on from Gryffindors and Slytherins, to Gryffindors and Ravenclaws, and so on and so forth. Today, their first periods were Gryffindor and Hufflepuff in charms with Slytherin and Ravenclaw in Herbology. They would have a lunch our around noon and then supper at five, after which they were free to do what they wished. They all agreed to meet here by the lake every morning to depart for their classes together, but to eat lunch and dinner with their houses unless they could help it.

When the time came, the group parted their separate ways, Slytherins and Ravenclaws staying on the grounds while the rest headed indoors. The first period passed relatively uneventful, well as uneventful as a school for magic can get. Second period was much the same save for Professor Severus Snape, the potions master, being ungodly unfair to Harry, which resulted in much discussion about it later amongst those who sat with him. (Ron, Hermione, Arma, Nox, Ryan, and Tempest, and of course Harry himself) Wanting to share the story with those who were not there, the group decided to meet again at lunch by the lake. Their rant about Professor Snape lasted surprisingly long considering they repeated the same insults over and over again with no signs of boredom with the subject. (had Hermione been there, she would have stormed off in annoyance, since everyone would have ignored her plea to change the subject) Again the time came to depart and they went off their separate ways. Yet again, their classes were for the most part, uneventful, but slightly better and no one brought up the topic of Snape again at dinner, when they all met, yet again, at the lake.

A few weeks past by with no change in events. Reports to the immortals didn't hold much info and were rather short because of that fact. Everyone began gradually making more friends inside their house and was now spending only mornings by the lake. Which they cherished and dreaded the coming of winter, afraid that meeting here would become a burden from the cold. Week after week moved them along through September into October. With not much change in the mood, Nox, Arma, Luna, and Leva were growing ancy with all their homework. On the day of Halloween, which was Leva's birthday and Nox had planned to throw her a surprise party. (haha i'm listening to "This Is Halloween"!! XD) Her and Arma were just on their way to potions. They had felt the urge of nature and told the others to head to class with out them. Turning the corner outside the potions room, the girls were just in time to witness a meeting between Harry and Malfoy. They were standing close to each other, whispering. Behind Draco, just close enough to hear, stood Crab and Goyle, his cronies. And on Harry's right stood Ron, who was listening carefully to the conversation.

As casually as they could, Nox and Arma deliberately walked behind a group of Ravenclaw girls, of which Luna was not present, and made a bee line to the suit of armor directly behind Harry where they could hear what was going on. They leaned against the suit, pulling out a book. Pretending to read it, their ears pricked to listen for what was being said between the five boys. "So I'll meet you tonight. In the trophy roommate midnight." That was Draco. He was planning something vile and Harry and Ron were caught up in the middle. "Be there and we'll settle this then." Draco skulked off with out another word. His cronies followed, leaving Harry and Ron alone with only a piece of metal hiding the girls from view. "Should we do it Ron? We might get in trouble." Harry sounded nervous. "We'll be fine. Besides, what would Malfoy say when we didn't turn up?" Ron had successfully persuaded Harry and the two mossied off to the potions room.

Arma turned to Nox after closing her book and replacing it in her bag. "A midnight meeting huh?" She said casually. "Wonder what it's about." Nox nodded her agreement and they made their own way to the potions room. 'I bet Draco wont show' Nox thought to herself. She wondered if she should warn Harry, but her thoughts were pushed to the back of her mind when Professor Snape entered the class room, slamming the door behind him and silencing any discussions. "Today we will be making wiggenweld healing potions." He announced to the class. A few seats down, Nox heard Hermione shift in excitement. She did not know what a 'wiggenweld healing potion' was, except that it healed things. Next to her, Arma cupped her chin in her hands and placed her elbows on the table, preparing for a lecture.

Twenty minutes later, Snape was finally done flapping his mouth, of which Arma could just barely make out a long droll of words. Her eyelids fluttered open and closed. Snape always putting her to sleep. Finally, she heard the words "get out the needed ingredients and begin with step one on the board. Instantly, she snapped awake and bent under her desk to retrieve her potions materials. The rest of the class did the same, and within five minutes, everyone, save for Neville, were getting around to light a fire under their cauldrons.

Arma slid her box of matches open. Being a first year, none of them had yet learned to conjure fire, and so used matches. Drowsily, she struck her match against the side. Crack! It broke in two. The upper half of the match fell to the table top and Arma glared down at it. She lightly threw the other down and struck another one. This one broke as well. "Errrrggggg!" She groaned in agitation. Nox glanced over to her. "What's the problem?" she whispered. "My matches are friggen janky." Arma growled as a response. Nox sighed. "Here take mine." She handed Arma the box and proceeded with her potion, which was already lit and boiling. Yet again, the match was struck and broken. Without thinking, Arma slammed Nox's box onto the table causing quite a few people to jump and turn around. Again, Nox sighed and slid the box across the table top toward herself. She struck another one and began to lower the lit match to Arma's cauldron, but was interrupted. "Nox," Snape drawled. "I hope your not trying to do Arma's work for her... are you?" Nox froze just a few centimeters from Arma's kindling. "No… she was just having trouble with her matches and I was helping." Snape smiled slightly. "I'm sure that she can light her own fire, she is a big girl." The Slytherins giggled to themselves. They always laughed when he made fun of Gryffendors. Arma sat glaring, bloody murder, at Snape but, with him being a teacher, she contented herself with glaring down at her unlit fire. 'I wish it would light right now just to show him a thing or two.' She thought to herself. Pffffwoooosh! A fire sprang up underneath her cauldron, leaving her and Nox, who had been watching her closely, dumbstruck. They both looked up at Snape, who had turned away and missed the event. He was reading a few papers on his desk which they guessed were their essays they had turned in earlier.

Arma smirked, and glanced down at the papers. By a closer look she could see that the one on top was Malfoy's. Glaring extra hard and thinking clearly of Snape's most current insults to her and her friends, Malfoy's paper suddenly burst into flames and Snape leapt away, crashing into a few jars behind him. He whipped out his wand and gave it a complicated wave. The fire died down but then sprang back up, singeing his eyebrows. Nox glanced over to Arma who was smiling mischievously to herself. Each Gryffendor, as well as Nox, Ryan, and Tempest burst into a spleen splitting laughter. Snape, who was preoccupied with the fire, was unable to quiet down the rumpus. He had tried a number of spells but finally resorted to a bucket of water, which he kept handy for incidents such as this. Unfortunately, the fire only leapt higher and Arma and Nox were reminded of a similar incident involving a tree house a few summers ago.

_They were playing together with Luna, Leva, Rose, and May in the tree house behind Arma's house. It was a beautiful summer night, they had decided to sleep in there. For a light source they had the bright idea to bring lanterns. One of them however, was missing a candle and they had replaced it with pine needles. (_this part of the story was actually an experience of mine… it actually happened.) _During the course of this adventure the flames of one of their lanterns suddenly grew out of control. They decided to get some water and pour it on the flame (_Smart aren't we!!) _in order to put it out. Unexpectedly, the fire burst up even higher resulting in many screams from the ten year old girls. "Dirt!!" Luna shouted. "We need dirt!!" Rose and Leva flew down the ladder to retrieve said dirt. Arma's father rushed outside to see what the screaming was all about. "Girls what's wrong?" he called up to them, not seeing the two on the ground. _

_"Rose! Leva! Where's the dirt?" Nox called down. "We can't find any!" Leva called up. "Your on the ground!! How in the world can you not find any!!" May shouted down. Arma's father looked around confusedly before climbing the ladder. "What are you doing?" They heard Leva shout up. "Oh yeah!! Hang on we found a bucket to put it in!!" After climbing up and throwing the dirt onto the fire, which actually worked, they gave a full explanation to Arma's father. "Okay, no more lanterns, but if you clean this up now, you can still sleep out here." The tree house fell silent save for an ominous dripping noise. "Where's the water coming from?" Arma's father asked looking around. "It's not water." May said shaking her head and pointing at the lanterns. "It's wax." _

The girls were jolted out of their reverie by Snape shouting. "Dirt! Dirt! Where did I put the Goddamn dirt!!" He rushed into the ingredients closet and reemerged with a large jar of dirt. Frantically, Snape throw a clump of it onto the flames, which, with Arma's consent, finally put out the fire. Snape picked up Malfoy's paper, revealing it to be the only damaged one. Nox smirked over to Arma. "Nice." She whispered to her. The rest of the class went by fast with small fits of giggles bursting up randomly. When the period was finally over, they rushed to their next class, anxious to get it over with so they could eat lunch at the lake and relay the events of potions.

First year Gryffendors and Ravenclaws gathered excitedly outside the Herbology greenhouses. They were waiting for Professor Sprout to open the doors. In the very back of the group, Arma was whispering into Leva's left ear. They both had huge grins on their faces and Harry assumed that Arma was relaying their last potions class to Leva. Although why she was being so secretive about it he did not know. As he was wondering this, the doors of the green house finally opened to reveale a large class room lined with so many plants, it was impossible to count at the time. There were vines crawling up the walls and escaping through windows in the roofs. Outside, they crissed and crossed, tangled, and knotted with very small puncture holes leaving in impossibly small amounts of sunlight. It reminded him vaguely of his cuboard back at the Dursely's.

"Hurry up! Hurry Up!" Professor Sprout was instructing. "Get inside before these plants die of sunlight." Finally, everyone was packed inside, being sure to stay as much in the center as possible. The doors closed of their own accord and the light was dimmed dramatically. They could just barely see Professor Sprout hand two large boxes to the two students closest to her. "Pass these around, inside are goggles, they'll help you see in the dark." A few minutes later the entire class had retrieved a pair of goggles from the boxes, put them on, and were now waiting patiently for their instructions. Near the back, Arma and Leva were whispering quietly to each other. "Nox would love it in here." Leva said, loking around through her goggles. Nox preffered dark places, she never slept with any sort of light, unless it was natural and could not be helped. She also slept more in the day than the night, the other girls had caught her on more than one occasion napping on a feild in the warm summer sun. However, at night she was the most active and ready to get into trouble. She also held a soft spot for the gardens. She was always trying to persuade someone to take a walk with her, but was just as ready to take one on her own.

"Heh yeah." Arma smiled, remembering that particular evening in the treehouse she had recalled earlier._ Luna's eyes fluttered open. She sat up with an uneasy feeling sinking in. Looking around the dark treehouse, she counted heads and realized that... Nox was missing. Frantically, she shot out of her sleeping bag and shook each girl awake. "Nox is missing!" She whispered urgently to them. "We need to go find her, I think somethings wrong." Arma rubbed her eyes sleepily. "Maybe she just went to the bathroom, she'll be back in a minute." Yawning, she turned back towards her sleeping bag. "No, Arma, something is wrong, I can feel it." Arma looked her in the eye and realized that she was right, something was wrong. "Okay, let's go, but don't wake my dad." Luna nodded and the girls retrieved a flashlight.They descended the ladder and aimed the light on the ground, searching for foot prints. There they were! Heading from the ladder straight into the forest. Tightening together and holding hands with Luna leading the pack, they creapt into the shadows. The beam of the flashlight illuminated dark bushes and thick tree trunks. They could hear the hooting and russling of the nocturnal inhabitants. Beyond the flashlight's beam, the girl's could see nothing but got the feeling that something else could see them. RUSSLE RUSSLE CRACK! The girl's spun around, their feet almost lifting off the ground. "Nox?" Luna's voice echoed back to them through the silence that had settled in. 'That's weird,' Arma thought. 'Woods don't usually echo.' Without warning, a black shadow dropped down between them sending screams from the girls as they scattered away and Luna dropped the flashlight. Hollow laughter rang through the trees and the girls watched as the beam of light, which had been pointing horizontaly across the ground, was now being lifted to piont directly downward. Slowly, the beam's potition changed again. It rotated to face upward where it flashed across the face of... Nox. She laughed heartily and the beam shook. Luna stood up angrily. "What was that?" She shouted. "We were worried about you! Why did you leave the treehouse, you could have gotten hurt." Luna glared at her through the darkness. "Sorry to scare you." Nox's voice sounded truly sorry and Luna ran to give her a hug. "I only left to get some fresh air and to think, you know I love the forest." Luna nodded but Arma was still angry with her. They had, after all, been waken from their sleep. And for what? To be scared out of their wits by the very person they had been worried about? "We were in a tree house. The air is pretty fresh in a tree, Nox." Arma said, crossing her arms stubbornly. Nox shrugged a smile and suggest they return to bed before Arma's dad came to check on them again. Arma ablidged, still somewhat angry, but overall forgiving. A few paces before the end of the forest, however, Arma realized that the feeling from before had not completely disappeared. She glansed back into the shadowed trees. Watching them, were two bright red eyes. Lettling out a gasp, Arma fell over, knocking over Rose and May. "Hey!" May shouted as she hit the ground. Arma looked at Luna and Nox, then pointed dumbly at the eyes, only... there weren't any. What she had seen, be it reality, a dream, or simply her imagination, was gone with out a trace. _

"I'm still mad at her for that trick she played on us." Arma whispered to Leva. "Yeah, that was pretty mean, I still don't know why she was out there, a breath of fresh air seems more like a cover-up. By- the- way, what was it that you saw when we were leaving?" Leva asked. "Nothing, it was just my imagination." But Arma was still not quite sure that it had been. Hadn't it?

When class was over, the first years filed out, talking excitedly about their lesson. Arma and Leva were the first ones out, surprisingly, with Harry, Ron, Fidel, and Hermione right behind them. They climbed the steep hill back up to castle, talking avidly the whole way, both about the herbology and potions lessons of that day. Crack! Leva looked down, and realized that she had stepped on an i-pod. "Hey, some one must have dropped it." She picked up the music device and held it for the others to see. It had a silver plastic case, which is what had cracked, that covered the touch pad as well. "Maybe it'll have some contacts on it so we can see who the owner is. (i-pod nanos let keep phone numbers on it) Leva pressed the center button down to wake it up, but nothing happened. "Maybe the battery is dead." Fidel offered. "No," Hermione said from the back of the small group. "It wont work here at Hogwarts, none of the electronics do. There's to much magic in the air for the electricity to travel." Leva looked at her confusedly. "Yes they can, I listen to mine all the time." Hermione gave her an odd look. "That can't be possible, I read it in Hogwarts a History, your i-pod must run on magic." Leva glared at her. It was _her_ i-pod she would know if it ran on magic. "No! It was muggle made, it's electronic, not magictronic!" The others laughed at her pun but her and Hermione stood glaring at eachother. "No, you must be mistaken, it can't possibly work here if it's electronic." Hermione's voice was cold as ice, but Leva's glare was even colder. 'I'll show her a thing or two.' She thought. Her grip tightened on the i-pod, and suddenly, music was blaring through the head phones attached to it. Leva looked down at the screen, which was alight and branishing the words: Daddy's Little Defect, Sugarcult, Start Static. She smiled up at Hermione, who stormed off toward the castle ahead of them. "Oh! wait! I forgot something!" said Arma, stopping. "I'll be right back! You go on ahead!" She turned and ran back to the greenhouse. None of the others moved and were still standing where Arma had left them when she returned.

"Leva!" Arma shouted excitedly. "What?" When Arma had finally reached her, she leaned over and whispered something in her ear. A look of realization crossed Leva's face and then she smiled malichiously. "What's going on through your heads?" Ron asked, raising his flaming red eyebrows. "Nothing." The girls jeered in unsion. A bell in the school rang and the small group of students rushed off to their next class.

Meanwhile, on the second floor of the castle, Luna and Nox sat in charms, listening to one of professor Flitwicks opening lectures. These didn't usually last very long and were quite interesting if you listened. But right not Luna was having a very hard time doing this. Obscuring her view of poor little Flitwick, were a dozen very tall stacks of paper. Luna leaned left and right in order to see around them. (forget standing up, they nearly reached the ceiling!) Next to her, Nox was having the same problem, as were Tempest, Ryan, and Padma. Luna had already tried raising her hand to tell him, but alas, he could not see her just as she could not see him. Raising her voice did not seem to work either, because poor little Flitwick could not figure out who the noise was coming from.

Luna resigned herself to slouch in her chair and simply not know what the lesson was for today. She would not know what they were supposed to do, and then would fail whatever test they had on it, and then fail the class, and then- there was a loud WHOOSH!! and suddenly the papers were all over the floor. Flitwick stood there, dazed. Then, still not seeing the students that were previously covered, flicked his wand and the papers stacked themselves back up exactly where they were before. 'Grrr no, don't put them there! We can't see!" WHOOSH!! the papers were on the floor once more. "Well now, that's odd." Flitwick said in his squeaky voice. He moved to put them back, but Luna interrupted him.

"Um, sir." At the sound of her voice, Flitwick looked up and gave a jump when he realized that there were students there. "Er, yes Luna?" "Maybe it would be better if you put them somewhere else, so they don't blow away again." Flitwick nodded and then made another flick of his wand, sending the papers to a corner on the other side of the room.

Nox looked over to the left side of the room where most of the Slytherins were sitting. Malfoy was staring back at her, the look on his face told her that he had just been using simple math, putting two and two together to make four. He remebered what had happened in potions, made the connection that it had been Arma Snape was yelling at, and therefore, it had been Arma who set the fire. Now here they were, A large stack of papers obscuring Luna's view, and so it had been Luna who had sent the papers flying. He already knew about the immortals and that they belonged to them, he abviously thought that these were just our immortal powers acting up or something. But that was the thing, immortals didn't have these kind of powers. The only accounts of that ever happening, were the elders. So, she supposed that it was their generation who would be the new elders. 'Rose and the others must be having the same problem.' She thought to herself. Rose was a year younger than them, so was May, and Coro. They would probably be coming here next year, as the other half of the immortal's last hope. However, she wasn't sure where Rorrim and Raine were.

Luna sat, now watching Flitwick as well as listening to him, feeling quite pleased with herself. She wasn't sure why, but she felt that it had been her doing that sent the papers everywhere. 'Nox did tell me about her potions class with Arma earlier.' She thought. 'I was agitated, maybe the same thing happened to me.' She sat in wonderment about it for the rest of the class. (of course until their hands-on period where they practiced making a teapot flip in mid air, then she was flicked her wand in wonderment, this resulted in sending Crabbe's wand back into his face, leaving a large purple bump)

Finally, the period was over and everyone rushed off to lunch. The group met at the lake again, shouting out tails of flying papers, undead i-pods, and flaming essays. Ron also informed the group that Hermione had locked herself in the bathroom, refusing to come out. "Why?" Tempest asked. "Because she heard me say something about the fact that she has no friends and spends too much time reading books." He bowed his head in shame and the others whitnessed the immense reddening of his ears and the back of his neck.

"Good job!! No one wants to hear that!!" Tempest shouted back. "You idiot! Where were you when you said that?" Ron turned even redder. "In the library." The others in the group dropped their jaws while Arma and Harry laughed (they had been with him). Ryan brought his hands together in a clap, first slowly then faster, starting the rest of the group in an applause. "Good, job, you win the stupid award!!" He said, slapping him on the back. Everyone laughed along with Ron. Leva looked up at the sky. 'I hope we can stay like this for ever.' She thought, smiling.

Lunch ended shortly after, and they departed again to their classes. A period went by before Arma remembered something very important. It was break now, and she looked up and saw Nox, Tempest, and Ryan approaching her in the courtyard. "Hey, did you ask Sprout?" Nox asked when they reached her. "Yeah, she said it was fine." Nox smiled. "Good! Now we just need a food source." She rested her hand against her chin and stared off into space thoughtfully. "Maybe we can somehow snitch some food from the kitchens." Ryan offered. "But how do we get into the kitchens?" Tempest asked. "I don't know, maybe there's some portrait or something covering the door." Arma said, she glanced at Tempest for second, then jumped back from her facial expression. "Arma," Tempest cooed. "Is your house common room behind a portrait?" Arma turned red at realizing what she had said and then shook her head figurously. "NO!" Ryan and Nox smiled aswell. "Oh come on, Arma, tell us the truth." Nox jibed and the three of them drew closer.

"Hey!" A male voice said from behind them. The three slytherins turned to face two older red haired Gryffendors who looked exactly the same as eachother. "No, they're not." Arma said, coming up beside Nox. "They're my friends, don't worry." One of them scowled down on the first years. "I've never heard of a gryffendor being friends with Slytherins." Nox glared up at him. "Well we are! So get used to it!" The other twin smiled and laughed. "Are you laughing at me?" Nox seemed about ready to punch him in theface, so Arma decided that it was time to step in. "Um... this is Fred and George Weasley." She introduced, pointing at the cooresponding twin when she said their name. "This is Nox, Tempest, and Ryan. Nox is one of my best friends, so be nice." "Oh! Are you that one girl whose related to the Malfoys?" Fred asked. "Ron told us about you. He said you didn't like Malfoy. Is that true?" Nox made a so-so motion with her hand. "He's an ass most of the time, but when his friends aren't around, he's nice."

An idea popped into Arma's head. "Hey! Do you guys know where the kitchens are?" George looke puzzled but ammused at the same time. "Yeah why?" Tempest spoke up first. "We're throwing a surprise birthday party for one of our friends!" She shouted and punched the air with excitement. "Shhh!" Ryan and Nox tackled and then looked around for Leva. "Don't shout it, she might be around." Nox whispered. "Yeah," George laughed. "You don't want to pull a Ron."

"What about me?" Ron asked, he had just joined the group with Harry and looked around at them all searchingly. "Nothing." Fred laughed. "Hey," Nox began. "We're going to throw Leva a surprise party tonight during the Halloween feast. We got permission from Sprout to have it the Greenhouse, but she's going to shaparone." Harry and Ron looked excitedly at each other, then turned back to her. "Are we invited?" "Of courese!" Said Arma, she looked up at the twins, "Your invited too, but only if you show us where the kitchens are." The twins nodded, but then the bell rang. The group stopped and Arma, Harry, and Ron grudgingly headed off to their next class, Arma shouted over her shoulder. "I'll tell Luna about it, we have the same class!"

Neither the twins nor the slytherins moved and George gave them a quizzical look. "We have a free period now." Ryan explained. George's face lit up into a smile. "That's cool cuz so do we!" Nox and the other two smiled back. Fred and George agreed to show them the kitchens now, so they could move the food into the greenhouse. Since it was late in the day, none of the classes would be using the first one, which contained all of the domestic plants, such as singing poppies or what not.

The twins led them into the great hall and back behind the long table where the teachers usually sat. They entered through a wooden door into a long hallway. On the wall hung a large painting of a bowl of fruit. Fred reached up, just above Nox's head, and tickled the large pear in the center. It wiggled and giggled for a moment until they heard a click and the painting swung open on hidden hinges. The twins entered with the other three right behind them. Ryan, being the last of the group, stepped over the threshhold into a large room, filled with tiny creatures wearing an odd assortment of ties, tea pot covers, pillow cases, and other such things. One of them looked up at Fred and smiled. "Good day Master, nice to see you again!" It's voice was squeaky and high. Ryan didn't think that he could stand a voice like that for more than a few house at a time. It would give him a major headache.

Fred knelt down and spoke to the creature. "We need a bunch of food for a private party we're having later, do you think you could quickly cook us up some?" The creature nodded excitedly and rushed off among the other creatures just like him. "What are they?" Tempest whispered. "They're house elves." George answered. "Haven't you ever seen one before?" Tempest and Ryan both shook their heads. "I think one of my teachers had one." Nox said, trying to remember clearly. Fred and George exchanged puzzled looks but didn't say anything. "Why do they wear those clothes." Ryan asked. "Go to the library and check out a book on magical creatures, it'll tell you everything about house elves. It'll give you a much better explanation than us, trust me."

The house elf came back with several trays covered with lids. Fred and George took them and then handed a few over for the others to hold. After thanking the elves, the five students backed out of the kitchens and then took a short cut, courtesy of Fred and George, to the grounds. From there they tried to stay out of sight from any teachers or Slytherins. Finally, they came to the first greenhouse door. They had no trouble opening it and were soon staring around the interior. Inside, the sun shone through the uncovered walls down at the brightly coloured blossoms. In the far corner, Tempest heard the unmistakable sound of a chorus. A group of red blossoms could be seen swaying and bouncing to the beat of the song.

"Singing Poppies." said George, he shook his head in amusment and placed his tray on the center table. As some lilacs began making bell noises as a harmony, the others set down their trays around his. Taking a quick peep, Ryan lifted the lid of his to reveal several honey buns, lolly pops, cauldron cakes and other sweets. A look at the others revealed a two course meal for a dozen people. "How did they know we needed so much food?" Tempest asked in wonder. "They just know those kinds of things I guess." Fred shrugged.

By now, at least three more groups of plants had joined the choir with various sounds, such as string basses, drums, and trumpets. A particularly loud cone shaped flower blasted into Tempest's ear. She lashed out as a reflex, but someone caught her hand. "Don't hurt my flowers." Professor Sprout said. She let go of Tempest's hand and smiled. "Just ignore them and they'll stop." Tempest nodded and turned away from the flower. It blasted into her ear again, attempting to get the same reaction. BUt not even it's shadow crossed her face.

"So!" Professor SProut clapped her hands and rubbed them together. "What shall we do first? This is a birthday party, it has to be special!" She bussled over and began flicking her wand at the table. Plates appeared along side cups and utensils. She then began to place various items of food onto the different plates, organizing them into the five food groups. "How about some streamers!" Her wand flicked again and long rolls of brightly coloured paper shout out of the end. The streamers fastened themselves to the ceiling. The sun shone through them, almost like a suncatcher, making the greenhouse brighter than even before. A chorus of 'ooes' and 'awes' escaped the flowers when Sprout was finally down and the greenhouse looked like the end of a rainbow. "Hey, where's the gold?" Fred whined sarcastically. "Sorry lad," Sprout answered back, just as sarcastically. "But you missed it, the last chum just took it."

A couple periods later, Arma was leading Leva and Fidel onto the grounds for supper. "But Arma, i want to eat my dinner first!" Arma sighed with annoyance. SHe wanted to tell her so badly, but that would ruin the surprise. "You'll eat soon enough, don't worry!" It was Leva's turn to sigh, but she continued to follow Arma. Fidel walked behind her wearing a smirk on her face. Fidel already knew what was happening. Arma had whispered it to her in Herbology when Leva had been occupied with a plant trying to bite off her hand.

Leva was dragged into the first greenhouse for God knows what crazy thing Arma had planned. But when she stepped through the doorway, she found something she never would have expected. Luna, Nox, Harry, Ron, and several others jumped out from behind random pots and tables covered with... not plants... but food. ANd the center of the middle table... stood a tall five layered cake. (Sprout had conjured it earlier). Around she noticed that the different plants and flowers were making music. Not classical music like they did in Alice in Wonderland, but the music she liked. Currently they were singing "Hate Every Beautiful Day" by "Sugarcult". Proffessor Sprout cut the cake into several generous slices and passed them around for everyone to enjoy.

After the cake was eaten, the students started on the other food they had retreived from the kitchens. "Presents!" Arma shouted holding up a cardboard box. Just below the lid of the box, Leva noticed six one inch holes. Holes in a box were usually meant for something to breath, which meant that whatever was in it was alive. A smile spread across Leva's face from ear to ear. Arma set the box down on the table in front of her and Leva aproached it. Inside the box, she could hear a soft meow. Closing one eye, she put the other to one of the holes. On the other side, she saw a blue eye searching her equaly blue eye. She pulled away from it, then excitedly lifted the lid off. a small black kitten looked up at her. It's huge eyes were electric blue just like her's. "Aww." Leva axclaimed. She set the lid down and reached her hands inside the box. She grasped the kitten around it's middle and lifted it out so she could give a big welcoming hug.

"We thought you would like." Arma said smiling at her and Luna and Nox nodded, also smiling. "Oh!! I do I do I do!!" Leva rubbed her face against the kitten's. INresponse, it purred in her ear. "But how did you get it?" Leva asked, hugging the kitten close to her chest. "Her." Nox said, winking. "She's a girl. And Proffessor Sprout gave her to us actually. Right proffessor?" Proffessor Sprout nodded. "I found her on the outskirts of the dark forest the other day. She looked all beat up, so I took her in. Then, when your friends here told me you had a thing for cats, I told them to give her to you. She needs a good home, and from what I've heard. Your better than some of the nasty little brats livin' around here these days." Leva smiled and squeezed the kitten for a second, to show she loved it already.

"What'cha gonna name it?" Fidel asked from behind her. "I'm not sure." She said. "It has to be a very special name, so I want to take my time." The room fell silent as Leva gazed lovingly at her new kitten. "Well," Proffessor Sprout began. "I need to use the toilet, any one?" Ron, Harry, and Leva nodded. Leva placed her kitten in Arma's arms and exited the greenhouse with Sprout, Harry, and Ron. They made the long track back to the school in the darkness in silence. When they approached the door, it was opened for them and Professor Quirille (sp?) stumbled out. In the pale light, he looked paler and more feerful than usual. "Oh! Prof-fessor S-sp-p-p-prout!" He spluttered. "Is something wrong Quirille?" She asked him. "There i-is a t-troll in the d-dungeons!" He said, his eyes were now popping from their sockets in fear and he pulled her inside. Forgetting the students, Sprout rushed in after Quirille. BOOM! The castle shook, and Leva could see dust puffing from the stones. Her and the other two scrambled inside to see what the comotion was. "A troll?" Ron exclaimed. His face was almost as pale as Quirille's and he gulped loudly. "Quirille said that it was in the dungeons." Harry stated, forgetting he had to pee and wanting to rejoin the party as soon as possible.

Another crash from around the corner told them that the troll was no longer in the dungeons, but very close by. "It's near the Girl's Toilet." Leva whispered. They could now smell a ranky stentch creep across the hall, making them gag. "Hermione!" Ron shouted. Harry and Leva turned to shush him but he continued anyway. "She doesn't know! I bet she's still in the bathroom!" With another thought, the three first set off at a sprint toward the girl's bathroom... and the Troll.


	4. Chapter 4

Part 4:

Leva, Harry, and Ron leaned around a corner to get a better view of the troll. It smashed it's way through a door and the wall surrounding it with the combination of its own body mass and the large club it held in its hand. A closer look told Leva that it had just found itself in the girl's toilet. The sound of a scream reached around the mass of the troll and resonated in her ears. The three students turned to eachother, whispering: "Hermione." The three nodded and rushed off after the troll who had just stepped deeper into the bathroom.

"Ron! use wingardrium liviosa on his club!" Leva shouted over the troll's roar. The troll had raised its club into the air in a full blown roar. Leva guessed that teachers would soon come to their rescue, but if they didn't do anything right now, Hermione might not make it. Ron reached into the inside pockets of his robes to retrieve his wand.

When he had it fully out and above his head, he gave it an odd flick while shouting: "Wingardrium Liviosa!". The troll lowered its arms as its roar faded away, however, it lost its grip on the club and it continued to float in the air above its head seemingly on its own. UHHHH. The troll let out a questioning noise and looked up to see its own club come crashing into its face, breaking its nose and knocking it out.

The troll thudded to the ground unconscious, and the three students looked across the room where Hermione was rushing towards them. She was pale and clearly frightened. (Duh! Who wouldn't be!) They heard footsteps rushing behind them. Turning around, the small group faced a very astonished Professor Mcgonagall. She looked from the troll sprawled on the floor and the four students standing at its head. Her face was pale around her gaping mouth, and Leva caught sight of a few wandering strands of hair.

"What happened in here? What are you children doing?" Professor Mcgonagall managed to pull the rest of her senses together, leaving no trace of the astonishment from before.

"Well..." Ron began.

"It was my fault Professor." Hermione cut in, almost in tears now. If she was astonished before, it was nothing like Professor Mcgonagall was now. She stared down her long nose at Hermione, her eyes wide, eyebrows raised, and her mouth gaping.

"You, miss Granger?" Again, she regained her composure and turned to glare at Ron instead, as if she thought he had put her up to this.

"Yes, me." Hermione enfisized on the last word, making Mcgonagall turn back to face her. "I thought that I could beat the troll, I read about them you see, but I was obviously wrong and if Leva, Harry, and Ron hadn't come..." She trailed off dramatically and there was the faintest hint of a smile flashing across Mcganagall's face.

"Well I am disapoinnted in you Miss Granger. But I see you have learned your lesson." Behind her, Professors Sprout, Snape, and Quirell came rushing up to her, out of breath and sweat beating down their brows.

"The troll i-is no... longer in the... dungeons." Snape gasped barely audible. He opened his mouth to say more, most likely some logical plan on how to find, trap, and get rid of the troll. However, they no longer needed one.

"I know, and I've found it... go ahead, take a look." Professor McGonnagall inclinded her head toward the still unconscious troll (that was one heavy club) and the other teachers gaped at her, then the troll, and back. Ron cleared his throut loudly and the other teachers finally saw the four students, three of which had their wands out, and the other a complete physical and emotional mess. Their mouths fell wider as they peiced two and two together. (which makes four, good job you guys)

"The... the students did..." Snape trailed off. He was completely bewildred by even the thought that four first years could take down a fully grown troll. But the evidence was right in front of his long greasey nose.

"Professor Sprout," McGonagall addressed the herbology teacher. "I believe you were with these students before the Troll incedent, would you please take them back to your tasks." Professor Sprout nodded and ushered the four silent children into the hall, around the corner, and out the large heavy entrance. It wasn't until they stood just outside the first greenhouse before they burst into laughter.

"Did you see his face?" Ron chortled, is own was face was beat red and his smile reached both red ears. The other's nodded while laughing, even Hermione couldn't stop herself. Professor Sprout also smiled, although still a bit confused as to how these four first years could have taken a troll. She reached up to the door handle and pulled it. A wave of music flooded the doorway and began to flow up away into the air. Inside, everyone was singing. Fred,George, Luna, Nox, Arma, Fidel, Tempest and even Ryan were all singing.

"I never thought I would hear that song being sung by wizards." Hermione said in awe. Harry nodded, he couldn't say anything cause he was laughing so hard.

"What song is it?" Ron asked, confused.

Leva smiled. "Heffelumps and Woozles." Ron gave her a quizzical look, pushing her to explain further. "It's a song from a child's movie called 'Winnie the Pooh, Arma must have taught it to everyone, she loves that song."

"Heffelumps and woozles are very, confoozles!" Everyone in the greenhouse sang jubilantly. "Hey you guys, come join us, it's fun!" Luna said, pulling Leva and Hermione inside, with Ron and Harry following. Professor Sprout left them to their fun and headed towards her office in the back. "So, what shall you name your kitty, Leva?" Luna held the small kitten up to Leva with a smile. Carefully, Leva reached out and plucked the small cat from Luna. She cradled her in her own arms before answering.

"Kita, that's her name, Kita." Leva whispered the last word into the kitten's thin ear. It twitched and looked up at her. Their electric blue eyes met and a warm glow surrounded Leva's heart. She hugged the kitten to her chest and smiled at her three best friends. "Thanks you guys." She said softly.

Later that night, Nox lay in her bed waiting for sleep to weigh down her eyelids. Behind her, she could hear the low murmer of girls gossiping to eachother. 'Pansy shut up!' she thought to herself. She was the only one being kept awake by them. Everyone else was breathing deepily and steadily, the way you do when you are sleeping. 'It must be that light, that stupid light that I always have to turn off my self.' Nox thought. 'I hope the bulb burns out, right now, maybe they'll shut up then.' Suddenly the room went dark and the girls sqealed.

"What happened?" that was Pansy. 'Thank God' thought Nox.

"I think the bulb must have burned out." The other girl said timidly. "We'll have to change it I guess."

Pansy sighed. "Fine, where's the flash light?" Nox heard russeling and a drawer open. There was a click and then a beam of light flashed across the wall in front of her. 'Oh come on.' Nox thought with a scowl. The beam flickered and then went out. Nox heard smacking and the rattle of batteries. 'That's not going to work.' She thought.

"Oh come one," Pansy whined. "Where's your flashlight Elizabeth?"

"Um..." There was more russeling as Elizabeth searched for her own flashlight. Click, clickety, click. "It's not working either," Elizabeth whimpered.

"Don't be such a baby, you probably just need to change the batteries," Pansy scoffed.

"But I did, yesterday," Elizabeth sounded like she was going to cry."I don't know why it's not working,"

"Stop whining, you probably just put in the wrong batteries, here we'll get Tempest's flashlight, she wont care,"

"I think she will Pansy, Tempest doesn't really like you,"

"Well she'll have to deal with it," Nox could hear Pansy groping through Tempest's drawers despite Elizabeth's protests. Nox heard russeling and then a squeal from Pansy penetrated the silence.

"What are you doing Pansy?" Tempest's voice sounded groggy from sleep, and Nox guessed that Pansy had woken her up.

"Let go of my hand, freak, we just needed a flashlight," Nox could practically hear the sneer on her face.

Tempest sighed. "You don't need one, go to bed," Tempest snapped her drawer shut again. Pansy stayed still for a moment before she climbed back into her own bed.

"I told you Pansy," Elizabeth whimpered.

"Shut up Elizabeth, go to sleep, we'll get her back tomorrow," Pansy's blankets russeled and she fell silent. Elizabeth sighed and did the same, the room fell competely silent and Nox started to sink into a deep sleep. _ She ran, ran as fast as she could. She had to catch up with them. Who? Ryan, it must be Ryan, there he was infront of her, just standing there. Waiting. "Ryan!" She called. He turned, but it wasn't Ryan it was Rorrim. "Rorrim, of course it's Rorrim, how could I be so stupid?" He reached a hand out for her and she tried to grasp it, but then he dissapeard. Nox blinked. "Rorrim?" She spun around to face Arma. "Arma, Rorrim was here, did you see where he went?" Arma cocked her head. "Why are you looking for Rorrim?" Nox opened her mouth to answer and then stopped. "I don't know, I can't remember," "That's all right Nox, you were supposed to, you were supposed to forget," Nox narrowed her eyes at her. "Why?" She asked. "Because other wise you would have ruined everything, why are you trying to ruin everything?" Arma was now glaring at her. "I don't know what you mean," Nox cowered away, confused and terrified that she had messed something up. "Why, why did you? Are we not good enough for you? Do we not meet your wants, your needs? Why did you leave us?!" Arma was shouting now, and terribe burning sensation was flashing across Nox's stomach. She gasped and crumpled to the ground, she couldn't move, and Arma was still shouting at her. "What did I do?" She asked, but no sound came from her mouth. She rolled and rythed in pain until..._

Thunk! Nox landed on the floor, a few of her covers had slid off with her. Her stomach was still burning and she got the message. Sighing, she rolled out of her covers and stood up. Letting out a groan, she easily found her way through the dark dormitory and down the stairs to the common room. As she crossed the empty room, she vaguely noticed a boy enter the washroom sleepily. After reaching the grandstaircase, she turned to make sure no one had followed her this time. No one had, as far as she could tell. The high ceilinged hall was completely empty of life except for her.

In the Gryffendor common room, Arma was making her way to the portrait hole sleepily. 'Why in the middle of the night?' She thought to herself. She made her way clumsily down to the library, through the bookshelf and down the spiral staircase. "Hey guys," she groaned to Luna, Leva, and Nox. They groaned a second greeting back and then adjusted their attention to the crystal ball sitting contentedly on the table. After a long pause of silence, clouds began to collect and swirl. An image of Darnen's familiar face faded into view.

"Good evening girls," He said sweetly.

"More like good night," Arma groaned again. She half compilated to simply lay down and roll away from them so she could sleep.

"Tired Arma?" He asked with a smile.

"Yes,"

"Sorry about that, do any of you have anything to report?" The girls looked around at eachother, suddenly awake. "I take it you do?" Darnen looked between the girls, curious to hear their latest happenings.

"Weeeeelllllllll," Arma started. "We were in potions class, and Snape was being a jerk like he always is..." She explained the situation in great detail, not to mention enthusiasm. When she had finished, Leva excitedly told of her experience with the i-pod and then Luna stepped in with her flying papers and midjit teachers.

"Did anything happen to you Nox?" Darnen asked turning to her. She took a breath and opened her mouth, ready to answer with a no. Stopping slightly, the events of earlier that night flashed through her mind's eye.

"Yes..." The other girls leaned in to hear the story. "I was trying to sleep and these girls, in my dorm, had this light and I wanted it to go out, so it did... and then they tried getting another one and it went out too... they also tried batteries, they didn't work... so... yeah... basically." A chair squeaked quietly as the girls waited for Darnen to give them an explanation.

"What does it mean, Darnen?" Luna asked, breaking the silence. Darnen stared down at, as the girls guessed, his shoes. His mouth flapped open, then closed, trying to grasp at the right words.

"I... don't know..." He looked genuinley confuzzled and Leva told him so. "I don't think anything like this has happened since... since the last elders were appointed.

"Are May and Rose in the same situation?" Nox asked, sincerely.

"No... if they ever did it wouldn't begin until years from now... even the elders didn't develope your powers before they became of age..."

"What about Rorrim and Raine? Where are they by the way?"

"I haven't heard much of those two, Kaleb is incharge of contacting them... I think they're in Norway or something. They're going to a wizarding school called Durmstrang... it's cold up there that's all I know..."

"Hmm, so any news about that ex- elder you told us about?"

"Nothing new, we know that the child resides in the black forest, but that's pretty obvious,"

"But what if it wasn't the child? It could have been any other sort of dark creature or wizard or something,"

"We thought about that. So we sent a search party to find Carmender's body during the day. Probably about ten immortals went."

"What did they find?" The other girls sat silent and motionless, listening to the conversation unfold between Nox and Darnen.

"They didn't find her body, but they did find an interesting boulder,"

"A boulder?" Nox raised her eyebrows.

"Yes, a boulder. And yes it is a _very_ interesting boulder. On it's surface it had... transmutation circles painted on it,"

"Transmutation as in Alchemy?" Luna spoke up from Nox's right. She had done a lot of research on Alchemy over the years. Not because she practiced it, she was only feeding a small hunger for knowledge. She'd learned that transmutation circles were an essential tool for most alchemists. These circles were used to pass energy from the alchemist to the object of importance. For example changing a piece of wood into gold or silver. However, every alchemist had to follow the one rule: "Equivalent exchange." Meaning, as in the wood to gold example, you would have to have a lot of wood to make a meere nugget of gold. There, however, was one way to by-pass this rule: by using the philosopher's stone. (to you fellow americans out there, the philosopher and the sorcerer's stone are exactly the same thing. Philosopher just sounds cooler.) This stone was created from the souls of entire cities and war has been waged for a single pebble sized stone. It's only destincsion is that it is the colour of blood and it shines with it's own light. Currently there was only one stone exsisting and the girls were already aware that it was residing somewhere deep inside Hogwarts. (Darnen had explained that to them when they mentioned that Dumbledore deemed the third floor corridor off limits)

"That's exactly it, Luna," Darnen said.

"So? What does that have to do with Carmender and the child?" Nox asked stubbornly.

"Well, other than the tranmutation circles, there was also a distinct scent of Carmender, among other people, but her's was the freshest. This stone was put there to guard a dark spirit. It's been there for centuries, which is why the black forest is so big, it's trees live off of the tainted soul. In order to free the spirit, one would have to sacrifice a fresh human heart. The innocent is the best to use, but those have become scarce over the years. Which brings me to a case a while back where a muggle couple lost their way in the forest and then were found several days later near the same stone with their hearts ripped out..." Darnen trailed and Luna interrupted him.

"W-we've heard the story Darnen, you don't need to elaborate," Darnen nodded and continued.

"Well that also happens to have been the same way that Archen used to make her puppets, it's an art forbidden from the immortals, but she learned many other forbidden arts when she was with the demon."

"Archen?" Arma asked confused by the sudden name. (Ar-k-en)

"Archen is the ex-elder, that was her name," Darnen explained. Arma made an "O" shape with her mouth, indicating that she understood.

"So, because she used to use that art, you automatically assumed that it was her child that was following in her footsteps?" Nox asked, still not quite convinced.

"That's the general idea, of course there's a lot of facts that are strictly confidential with the elders but, that's the general situation,"

"Has there been any other trouble with the dark wizards?" Leva asked, speaking up for the first time.

"Um... there was some trouble with an escaped demon on a magic preserve somewhere in Egypt, but that's about it," Darnen answered.

"A magic preserve? What's that?" Luna asked with curiosity.

"Basically, just a huge estate that keeps magical creatures from the muggles, there are about... five of them around the world," Darnen turned to someone on his side out of the girl's view. "Sorry, our time is up, Iv'e got to book it to a meeting with the elders," The crystal ball clouded over and the room fell silent.

"Hmmm, I'm still not convinced, how could they know for sure that it's her child?" Nox asked with a slight agressive tone.

"They probably have a good reason, Nox," Arma spoke up. "They are alot older than us and have like five times the experience," Nox shrugged twisted her body to lay on her back. Her knees stuck into the air and were the only visible part of her to Leva who was sitting across the table.

"I don't any of us will sleep to night," Leva said, attempting light conversation. "My brain is about to explode from all the stuff Darnen just told us," Arma nodded her agreement but Luna and Nox remained silent. They both pricked their ears, Nox raised herself on her elbows and they both turned toward the stairwell. The sound of urgent whispering floated down to them from the darkness, followed by a thud, thud, thud!! Ron landed at the foot of the stairs, his face screwed up in pain.

"Hi guys," he squeaked. A fit of giggles burst into existance from the dark stairs and there was another set of thuds followed by Hermione, who landed on Ron, doubling his pain.

"What the hell you guys?" Nox exclaimed.

/ several minutes earlier /

"Harry, what are we doing?" Hermione asked. She had just been telling them to not sneek down to the trophy room in order to attempt a wizarding duel with Draco Malfoy. SHe had followed them out, only to descover that the fat lady guarding the entrance to Gryffendor tower, had left her post, leaving Hermione trapped outside. And so, she had joined Harry and Ron on their little escapade. When they arrived to their destination, Malfoy was no where to be found, however, Filch seemed to have gotten a tip-off from another student that they would be there. Escaping had been a challenge, but they somehow managed it, leading them straight into the library. Which is where they were now.

"I'm serious you guys, I saw another student go down here," He lead them dangerously close to the restricted section, but Hermione stopped them from proceeding any further.

"What are you talking about?" She demanded.

"I saw someone, between four and five feet just run this way," He pointed in the direction they were facing.

"It was probably just a teacher, let's see if the fat lady is back yet," Hermione insisted.

"She's right mate, it's probably just a teacher," Ron agreed. There was a russle of papers and a hand shock through a space between to rather thick books. It slapped against Ron's mouth silencing him.

"Shhh, keep it down or Filch'll be in here to wring our necksm," The three first years recogized the voice as Ryan and turned to see him and Tempest peering over top a few books at them.

"What are you guys doing here?" Hermione asked, angrily yet quietly.

"We could ask you the same thing," Tempest answered her.

"Fair enough," Harry interrupted. "Were one of you guys the one I saw?" He asked in a whisper.

"Could o' been, but there's a few other students up too, we were just following before we heard you guys thunking around," Ryan answered him, removing his hand from Ron's mouth. He and Tempest dissapeared from view as they continued toward the restricted section. Harry, Ron, and Hermione followed curiously. Ryan reached a wall near the restricted entrance, and began feeling around, pulling books halfway out and replacing them.

"What are you doing?" Ron asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Looking for a door," Ryan answered.

"That's a book shelf," Ron pointed out.

"Noooo," Ryan said sarcastically.

"I can asure you that it is,"

"I was being sarcastic ya know,"

"Oh,"

"Morons," Hermione whispered under her breath, began looking curiously at the books, having nothing else to do at the moment.

"Looking for some light reading?" ROn asked her a smug smile spread across his face. Hermione ignored him and continued scanning. On the third shelf up, she noticed a few books out of order, and being a nerd, she couldn't resist the urge to put them right. SHe pulled them out and rearanged them without any trouble. On the spines, a picture of a pheonix formed and she replaced them carefully. A moment later, there was a low rumbling and the book shelf began to swing open on hidden hinges.

"Hermione, what did you do?" Ron asked accusingly.

"She found the door," Tempest whispered back as a set of spiral stairs came into view. She began the descention first, with the others following close behind. There was a soft glow of light at the bottom, where voices could be heard. She stopped five steppes from the landing and sat down, ready to eavesdrop. The others followed in suit and fell silent, listening closely.

/ slightly into the future /

"SO you guys followed us down here after figuring out that Malfoy jipped you out of a duel?" Arma asked, amused.

"Just them, we had a hunch," Tempest said motioning her and Ryan.

"I see," Luna said. "How much did you hear?"

"Pretty much the entire conversation." Ron answered cheerfully.

"Great, we're doing so well with keeping this a secret," Leva said slumping her shoulders in defeat.

"Hey guys?" Nox spoke up. The others looked to her as if to say, "what did you do?". "Um... well... Malfoy knows too, eh sorta followed me down here for the first meeting..."

"Oh, Christ! Nox, what happened to your stealth skills?" Arma asked incredulously.

"They were still sleeping," She answered, sarcasm seeping from her pores. Arma groaned but smiled.

"So, I guess you guys know about the immortals now?" Luna asked with a sigh.

"Sorta, I think we have the jist," Ryan answered. "Your an organization formed to keep the balance between good and evil?"

"Basically," Nox asid lazily. "So, now what? Are we all going to bed?"

"I doubt the fat lady will be back, and if she is she won't be happy to see us," Harry stated matter of factly.

"Wait a minute," Leva stood and crossed the room to a stretch of wall. The others watched her with facination as she pried a wooden plank from the wall. Behind it, she had stored several packages of assorted candies, chips, and bottled drinks.

"When did this get down here?" Luna asked.

"Remember, I got down here early for the last meeting? I thought this could be a cool hang out after class hours and stuff," Leva grinned at them as she held up a package of licorice wands and Every Flavored Beans.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter Five:

Another weekend rolled around at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Only this particualr weekend marked the start of the quidditch season. The first game was between Slytherin and Gryffendor which aroused more fake arguments between Nox and Arma. Their small group was currently sitting around a beach tree discussing the game and other related topics. "We are sooo going to beat you guys," Ron was bragging to Nox, Tempest, and Ryan. "Harry _is _the yougest quidditch player in a century! Not to mention the _seeker_,"

"Yes Ron we _know_," Tempest complained. "Youv'e been telling us all week!" Ryan nodded in agreement but Nox wasn't listening. She was talkig Luna about one of their childhood memories concerning brooms and flying.

_Luna led the other girls excitedly into the stables of the immortals' center of operations. She had told them to close her eyes not wanting to spoil the surprise. She stopped in front of a closet. "Keep your eyes closed, no peeking!" As quietly as she could, Luna opened the closet door. Inside was a stash of several brooms mounted on the walls. Each broom had a plaque with a name. Luna reached for the brooms labeled with their names and began handing them out to her temporarily blind friends. They each took one, followed by a look of confusion. _

_"Brooms?" May asked, feeling her way down the shaft of her own. _

_"Yup!" Luna said excitedly. "They have our names on them, so we can ride them! You can open your eyes now by the way," The girls opened their eyes and stared in wonderment down at their brooms. _

_"Come on let's go!" Arma exclaimed. She bolted out of the stables with out waiting for the others and began to mount her broom. She lifted her right leg and swung it over the broom. "Up!" Arma said with a stirdy voice. "Up!" She said again when the broom did not respond. Luna scuffled up beside, already mounted and followed by the other girls. The tails of their brooms wagging between their legs. "Luna, how do I get in the air?" Arma wined._

_"I'll show you," Luna crouched her legs and pushed against the ground as hard as she could. She shot into the air with a small woosh. High above the gorund, the wind wipped through Luna's hair. Behind her she could hear the other girls soring up into the air after her. None of them showed as much passion for the wind. She had always been the one in the highest places, on cliff edges, the roof, and her broom. She'd descovered the broom one day after feeding her favorite horse. The walkway had just been cleaned and were slippery, causing her to fall and slam into the closet door. It shuttered open and she noticed a certain broom below a plaque bearing her name. At once she took it out for a spin and it became her new favorite hobby. _

_Suddenly, she leaned forward and the broom dipped sharply. A familiar lurch in her gut pumped up her addreneline and swooped down faster. The ground came dangerously close before she swooped back up into the air again. _

"I still don't like flying," Nox said with a shake of her head.

"I love it!" Luna exclaimed.

"why don't you try out for the Ravenclaw team next year, I think they're losing a player," Harry suggested.

Luna nodded. " I might just do that,"

The next morning, Luna awoke from her sleep with the other Ravenclaws. The common room was crowded and hectic with every one scrambling to be down for breakfast and sprint to the quidditch feild. Every one wanted a good seat to see Slytherine and Gryffendor who were big rivals to play eachother.

Luna met the other at the very top of the emptiest stand. The players stood facing eachother in the center of the field ready to shake hands. Madame Hooch blew a whistle and the teams shot into the air. For most of the game, Luna sat watching with the others. But she wasn't paying much attention, she was imagining herself soaring throught the air ready to catch the quaffle her team mate had just passed to her. She through then threw the quaffle and it soared straight through the center goal. A loud ringing sounded echoed across the feild followed by cheers from the crowd and Lee Jordan announcing a point for... Gryffendor?

Luna looked up at the score bored and saw that Gryffendor had just scored ten points. A miniscule Angelina punched her fists into the air, demonstrating her excitment. Around Luna watchers jumped up from their sitting potitions to cheer for the goal and then lightly bounced back into their seats when the Slytherin keeper retreived the quaffle and sent it it speeding through the air to one of his teammates across the feild.

"That was awesome!" Arma shouted. Below her Draco looked up and sneered.

"I know, Slytherins can really throw a ball can't they?" Arma stuck her tongue out in annoyance.

"No, that little trick was too predictable, I was talking about the amazing shot Angelina took and scored, Your keeper didn't even see it until the quaffle was almost out of the feild!" Draco stuck his own tongue out and turned back to the game.

"And Potter sees the snitch!" Lee Jordan announced through the magic megaphone. Every one turned to see Harry speeding towards the stands with a deliberant look on his face. WIthout warning, his broom jerked backward sickeningly. It then twisted upside down and began bouncing up and down as if it were trying to shake him off. The crowd let out a gasp of horror when he almost let go. Draco turned back around, the sneer glued back to his face.

"Looks like Potter could use some flying lessons eh?" On either side of him, Crab and Goyle chuckled dumbly at his poor joke.

"Shut up Draco, we're watching the game!" Nox sneered down at her cousin with disgust.

"So sorry Nox, I wouldn't want to spoil your fun in watching Potter die," He laughed synically and then continued. "Are you hoping he'll get together with your parents and throw you a welcome party when you die? Oh, but wait, I forgot, your parents hate you, poor baby," Draco threw back his head and laughed abnoxiously but missed Nox's murderous look entirely. She sprung from her seat and flew down a few benches before slamming into Draco and the two went rolling down several more empty benches before stopping at the tall wooden board designed to keep people from falling to their deaths. Everyone's attention was on Harry including the teachers so the fight went on unnoticed. In a rage, Nox punched every part of Draco she could while he rythed and screamed for help.

Back up with the others, Crab and Goyle and just figured out what had happened and raced down to help Draco but tripped over the seats in the process. They went rolling down towards them but slammed into the hand rail bar several paces away. While they sat there waiting for the world to stop spinning, Hermione and Ron stepped over them and made their way towards Luna, Arma, and Leva.

They reached them, slightly out of breath and silently pointed towards the next stand over which just so happened to be filled with teachers. "What is it?" Luna asked.

"Snape," Hermione said breathing normally now. He's the one making Harry's broom act up. I think he's..." Hermione stopped and stared down at the one sided fight between Nox and Draco. "What's happening down there?"

Ron followed her gaze and a grin spread across his face. "Whoa! Nox is really beating the crap out of him!" He said excitedly.

"Ron!" Hermione glared at him but turned back to Luna and the others. "See what you can do about Snape, I'm going to stop this fight," and with that began to descend the seats, her face set in a disaproving frown. Ron followed her not wanting to miss the action.

Luna turned to Arma. "Arma can you see Snape?" Arma nodded, but looked puzzled. "Try lighting his robe on fire, it'll break the eye contact he needs to jinx Harry's broom. Sure enough, Snape was staring intenltly at Harry, just like every one else, but with more meaning. Even from this distance, the girls noticed a slight movement of his mouth in order to form the words for the spell. Arma glared at him intently and squinted her eyes. After a few moments, a spark snapped up and bounced away, followed by a whoosh of flames at the very corner of Snapes black robes. It took him a few moments, but finely he noticed the heat and smell of the fire. Insurprise, he jumped up, nocking over Proffesor Quirrell and Flitwick. Several other teachers snapped around and Sprout began trying to stamp out the flame. The girls turned back to the game and watched as Harry regained his place on his broom and began speeding off towards a small glint of gold across the field.

"Nox, what are doing?" Hermione demanded as she danced around to avoid the scuffle.

"Teaching. This. Kid. A. Lesson. In. Manners." Nox replied. For every word in her seven word sentence, she gave Draco a hard punch in the face. His head rolled back and forth from the impact. Suddenly, Nox felt herself being lifted away from Draco's cringing body. Hermione had locked her arms beneath her shoulders, and was dragging Nox away.

"That's enough, Nox. I think you gave him enough bruises to last him a life time," Nox jerked violently, breaking Hermione's grip. She stood up and glared at the cringing form of Draco Malfoy.

"Watch who you pick fights with, your cronies can't always save you," Without another word, Nox climbed back up the seats, her body language sent out dangerous messages, keeping Hermione and Ron from getting too close to her. "Anything interesting happen while I was busy?" She asked cheerfully when she reached the other girls.

"Snape was the one making Harry's broom go heywire, Arma set his cloak on fire," Leva answered in a surprisingly calm tone.

"from all the way over here?" Nox was clearly impressed. Her and the other girls had been secretly practicing their talents after dinner in the room in the library. So far they hadn't made any discoveries of new powers. Luna suspected that they would appear under some kind of pressure.

Out on the field, Harry was close to the ground and carefully staggered to a standing potition on his broom. He spread out his arms for balance, mimicking a surfer ready to catch the next wave. The snitch was directly in front of him, just out of reach. It's gold surface flashed in the sun, making Harry squint. Subconciously, he stepped forward, immediately off balancing his broom. Landing face first in the dirt, he noticed something hitting the roof of his mouth. He pulled his face away from the dirt and propped himself up on his elbows. He cupped his hands around his protruding lips and coughed. There was a popping noise as the snitch landed in his palms, wet with saliva and shaking its wings dry.

"And He's caught the Snitch! Gryffendor wins!!" Lee Jordan shouted from the stands. There was an uproar of cheering which over powered the boos coming from the Slytherins. All around Harry, his team mates lightly touched the ground and gave him a hearty pat on the back or a hug. Harry smiled at them all, overflowing with pride. With a cheer, the team easily lifted him into the air and carried him off to the privacy of the locker room and away from his screaming fans.

"So that was Snape making my broom act up?" Harry asked as the group of students stopped several feet from the entrance to the castle. Everyone else had finally gotten to bed or their common rooms by the time Harry exited the locker rooms. Luna and the others had been waiting for him outside and watched as one-by-one each of the quidditch members left as well.

"That's what we're saying," Arma said. "We saw him mouthing spells, and you got control over your broom when I lit his cloak on fire,"

"Which broke his eye contact," Ron said, nodding his head in a way to suggest he had come up with the plan.

"Yes, Ronald, we understand that," Hermione sighed.

"But, why would he want to..." Harry began, confused that even, Snape, his least favorite teacher, might have killed him. "Wait... you lit his cloak on fire?" His eyes lit up with amusement as he gazed at Arma.

"That's right!" Arma said. Harry laughed lightly, but stopped as a thought reacured to him.

"But, still, why would Snape try to kill me? What's the point?"

"Well... it's Snape," Ron answered matter-of-factly. "What more reason do you need?" Ron smiled but it faded when Harry didn't join in with the joke.

"Ronald," Hermione said, rolling her eyes. "This is not the time for jokes, Harry is obviously bothered by the fact that he was almost killed by one of his teachers,"

"But how do we know he was trying to kill him?" Leva asked quietly.

"What?" Nox turned to her small friend with a wrinkled brow.

"We don't know that he was actually trying to kill Harry, maybe he just wanted to injure him, after, Dumbledore, or any of the other teachers, could easily have stopped Harry from falling," Everyone stopped to reguard Leva in a new light. She was right, they did not know what Snape's ambitions were. Only that they involved Harry and possibley a hospital bed.

"well,we're obviously not going to solve this mystery right now. We should go to bed," Hermione descided, turning back to the castle.

"I wont be sleeping much tonight," Harry said with a shakey chuckle.

"You better watch out Harry," Ron said in a mocking ghost impression, his hands flailing in the air. "Or Snape might sneek into your bed and stab you!" He jutted his fist close to Harry's stomach, immitating a knife.

"Shut up, Ronald!" Hermione shouted, making the girls and Harry laugh. And without another word, they headed inside for bed.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: Questions and Fueds

Sunday morning rose with the sun and the twittering of song birds. Arma sat up in her bed and stretched her cramped arms. Her roomates were still alseep when she left the room, dressed and hungry for breakfast. Unsuprisingly, she was one of few in the breakfast hall this early in the morning. The only other occupants were Snape who was alone at the teacher's table, Luna and Padma were the only ones at the ravenclaw table, and Cedric Diggory along with an unknown girl were silently eating at the Hufflepuff table. None of the Slytherins were awake yet it seemed since their table was completely empty. Arma descided to wait a little while for more of her friends to show up, and instead of eating breakfast thought about going to the library. She could chill out down in their secret room for a while, maybe even sneek a few books down with her to keep accupied.

Arma climbed up the moving stairs past sleeping portraits. Some of which were empty or contained inhabitants that did not belong there. In particular, Arma noticed several nurses, whom she knew usually resided in a painting hanging on the wall of the infirmiry, were now sleeping peacfully holdy either empty glasses or bottles in a painting of a banquet hall which usually only held two plump men and a few dogs.

Once inside the library, Madame Pince looked up from her desk and glared hard at Arma who crept as quietly and unsuspicious looking as she could towards a tall book case a few feet away, which she hoped, would hide her from Madame Pince's death glare. Behind the bookcase, Arna was met by more expected silence and a copy of the DAILY PROPHET which was a few days old but looked like it had never been unfolded. Out of curiosity, Arma picked it up and read the cover title: Gringotts Vault Broken Into! According to the article, vault 713 had been broken into. Even so, nothing was stolen because the contents had been extracted over a month before by the owner. Suddenly interested, Arma unfolded the page and began to read. The secret room was completely driven from her mind as she read farther down the column of words.

The story ended and Arma looked up, puzzled from its tale. 'Why would someone bother trying to break into the most gaurded building in all of London just to steal something that wasn't there anymore?' Arma thought to herself. 'How did they even manage to get into the vault in the first place?' The answer didn't come to her and so Arma shrugged her shoulders, picked up the paper and began to scan the shelves.

The books were all beautifully bound in leather. Most of them were kept nicely and almost looked new, however, the closer she journeyed to the restricted section, the more worn they became. Arma stopped in front of the black gates only three bookcases from the secret door. Behind them, the books looked ancient and worn beyond repair, some were even held in chains. She guessed that those contained some evil entity of some sort, although, why Dumbledore would allow those in the school library was a good question that Arma would one day have answered for her.

After a while, Arma grew tired of scoring the library, there was nothing there that interested her now, when the DAILY PROPHET story was still buzzing in her head. She left the library with her stomach grumbling and her mouth watering with the thoughts of food. As she entered the great hall, she noticed that the ceiling was mirroring a glommy sunless day and Arma was not looking forward to heading outside. More people were in the hall now, their chatting ecchoed around the walls, which accented the increase of people. Harry, Ron, and Hermione were tucking into a dish of porridge and chips when she joined them.

"There you are," Hermione said, looking up at Arma. "I didn't see you in bed when I woke up, so I figured you had come down here," Arma shook her head.

"I did at first, but there weren't very many people, so I went to the library for a while," Arma slapped the news paper onto the table in front of Harry who began to unfold it. "And look what I found," Harry read the article carefully to himself, and then again aloud.

"Someone broke into Gringgotts?" Ron asked bewildered. Arma nodded and gestured to the paper.

"That's what it says,"

"But look here," Harry said, pointing to a line near the beginning. "I shouldn't be telling you this, but, that's one of the vaults Hagrid took me to when we were in Diagon Alley,"

"Did you see what it was?" Arma asked.

"No, it was rapped in a bundle," Harry answered, shaking his head.

"Hmm..." Arma mused to herself.

"Maybe we should pay a visit to Hagrid," Hermione suggested brightly,

"What?" Arma and Harry asked together, turning to Hermione.

"Well, he was asked to pick it up so... maybe he knows what it is," Hermione sounded sure of herself, but Harry's expression told Arma a different story.

"No, we can't Hermione," Harry said darkley.

"Why not?"

"Because Hagrid told me not to tell anyone about that, and if we asked him he would know that i broke my promise,"

"I'm sure he'll forgive you, Harry, but I need to know what this is about, so I can report it back to the Immortals," Arma said sternly. Harry thought for a moment.

"Maybe if we show him the newspaper he'll understand,"

"It's worth a try," Arma nodded and Harry, Ron, and Hermione stood up.

"Shouldn't we wait for the others?" Ron asked. Arma shook her head and started toward the Entrance Hall.

"No, I'll call a meeting tonight and we can call them then,"

The small band of students crossed the grounds, their voices silenced by the gloomy atmosphere. Finally they reached Hagrid's Hut and banged loudly on the thick wooden door. Almost immediately the kids heard the muffled sound of a dog barking and then loud thunks on the floor as Hagrid approached the door. He swung it open on its large hinges, letting out a long, high screeching sound.

"'arry! It's nice ter see ya! An' you guys too o' course!" Hagrid bellowed leading them into his house but unintentionaly causing them all to stumble forward. "What brings ya here?" He beamed down at them all with such delight that Harry felt down right miserable. Unable to say anything else, Harry pulled the newspaper out from under his robes and unfolded it for Hagrid to read.

"That was the compartment we visited after mine, and we were wondering what was in it that was so important for this person to try and steal." Hagrid's smile fell so far Arma thought it would hit the floor had Hagrid not turned his back on them at that moment."Best make a cup o' tea," He said, more to himself. He laid the paper on the table without a second glance. Feeling quite horrible, Harry, Arma, Hermione, and Ron sat down at the giant table and waited passiently for Hagrid to join them; but Hagrid continued to busy himself with the gathering of tea cups and saucers. In an attempt to keep from looking at the students, he placed far too many cups into one hand and even more saucers in the other. On his way toward the table, they overbalanced and were sent crashing to the floor. Hermione let out a small squeal and wipped out her wand, giving it a flick and muttering 'Reparo' the cups and saucers flew back together with out so much as a scratch on them. Hagrid stooped to pick them up before Harry and Ron, who were closest could help. "I go' it," he muttered.

"Hagrid, we really need to know this information," Arma pleaded, still unable to look at him. Hagrid placed a cup infront of each of them before he sat down.

"Now all of you look here, there's more to this story," He indicated the newspaper, "than you can possibly dream, any meddling into this and you'll get yur hienies bearied deeper in the dirt than a dead man," He looked darkly at them all. The beatle black eyes glittering at them from under his jungle of hair.

"But, Hagrid-" Arma began.

"No!" He cut her off. "The only other people who know what's in there is Nicholas Flamel and Proffessor Dumbled-" Hagrid stopped, his eyes widened and he stared at the four students. "Ya should ferget what I just said, Ferget It! Ferget it! Ya gotta get ready for school anyways don't ya?" The room was silent for a moment.

"It's Sunday Hagrid, we don't have classes," Hermione squeaked, unable to stop her reflexes.

"Oh, well, ya should be off anyways, do yur homework or something," Hagrid walked over to his door and pulled it open. "Off with yer, off with yer I've got lots to do to day, go, go, go." The four Gryffendors filed out awkwardly and headed back to school.

"Well that went well," Harry said heavily as they puffed up the stone steps.

"No, not at all, but at least we know more than we did," Arma said, trying to brighten things up.

"What? All we know is that only Dumbldore, Hagrid, and Nickle Flamer know what was in there, how is that any help to us at all?" Ron asked incredulously.

"Nicholas Flamel, Ron!" Hermione said, rolling her eyes. Harry looked up at her suddenly as if some gear in his head had popped back into place.

"Who is that Hermione? I've heard the name before," He said.

"Well of course you have! Proffessor mentioned him in his lecture the other day!" Hermione rolled her eyes again.

"That can't be where he heard it from, Harry would not be able to remember a snipit of Bin's rants, let alone what they were about," Ron said as they entered the castle.

"Thanks Ron," Harry said with a half smile. "He's right though Hermione, I'm sure I heard it somewhere else, or maybe I read it..." Harry trailed off in thought.

"Got anything Mate?" said Ron.

"Nah, I lost it,"

"I'll run the name by the others, what was it again?" Arma suggested.

"Nicholas Flamel," Arma rushed off to the Great Hall where she had last seen Luna. She scanned the Ravenclaw table but turned up nothing.

'It's just as well, i did see her a while ago,' Arma thought as she instinctively ran to check the library. She found her sitting alone at a table piled high with heavy, leather bound books. "Found you, good," Arma said pulling out a chair to sit next to her. "We need to discuss something, bring any book you can about a wizard called Nicholas Flamel down to the room," Luna nodded slightly as Arma whispered into her ear. She slowly stood up and began sorting through the books. Without turning towards her and concentrating on making her lips move as little as she could, she whispered back to Arma.

"Who is he?"

"I don't know, thats why I need you to read about him,"

"I can't read about him if I can't find him,"

"Well, start looking,"

"Where? We don't know who he was, what he did or if he was good or bad,"

"So? We can still find him,"

"Where are you gonna look? There are thousands of books in here about billions of different wizards, we can't search every single one, that would take years!"

"Well, look in the general books first," Arma held up a copy of Famous Witches and Wizards, "if we find him in here we can get a gist of what he did and then go from there,"

"But he might not even be in there, I've never heard of him before so he might just be a lame old nobody,"

"I am quite certain that he is not a nobody,"

"What makes you think that?"

"Because he's close friend's with Dumbledore,"

"That doesn't mean any thing,"

"Yes it does,"

"No, it doesn't,"

"Yes, it does,"

"N-"

"SHHHHHH!" Madame Pince hissed at them from behind her desk. The girls stopped until she dipped her head back down and Arma made a nasty hand gesture in her direction.

"It does, because he's also got something to do with this," Arma triumphantly pulled out the copy of the daily prophet that had started all the comotion. Luna took it from her and began reading.

"What does this have to do with anything? She asked, handing that paper back to Arma a few minutes later.

"I talked to Harry, this is one of the vaults that he and Hagrid visited when Hagrid took him to Diagon Alley. Hagrid took something small out of it but we don't know what it is yet,"

"You say, Flamel has something to do with this?" Arma nodded. "Did he steal it?" Arma shook her head vigorously.

"No, no, no, he knows something about it. Hagrid let it slip, only him, Hagrid, and Dumbledore know what's in that package.

"And possibly who or whatever got into the vault the second time,"

"Which is why we need to find this Flamel person, to get a better idea of what migth be in there,"

"We should report this," Arma nodded,

"I duunno, I think we should keep it to ourselves for now,"

Luna picked up a stack of the books that were sitting on her desk and headed towards the secret room. "Well, come on then, we'd better get started, Holiday Break starts in three days,"

The two girls spent most of the morning down in the room by themselves, until they were joined by Nox and Leva.

"Well thanks for inviting us to the party guys," Nox said in her usual sarcastic tone as she descended the stairs, followed by Leva.

"Sorry, but it would have looked suspicious if we had gone to get you and then all four of us dissapeared at the same time." Luna said not looking up as she flipped through the index of "Ancient Witches and Wizards" for the third time. "I am not finding anything on this guy, Arma, maybe he really is just some old cook,"

"No, I'm sure he's here some where, Harry said he remembered the name," Arma answered. She also did not look up from her book.

"Who are we looking for?" Leva asked, carelessly picking up a particularly thick volume.

"Nicholas Flamel," Luna answered. She glanced up breifly but then plundged back into the text.

"Huh, never heard of him," said Nox. She picked up a fourth book and began flipping to the index.

"His name vaguely rings a bell," said Leva. The others looked up at her expectantly. "Vaguely." she said again to enfisize that she did not remember.

"Why don't we ask Darnen?" Luna suggested.

"Wont we get in trouble?" Arma asked.

"For what? It's just a simple question," Luna answered.

"I don't know, what if they don't tell us everything," said Nox.

"He'll have to tell us something, and we can look up the rest of it," said Luna.

"He might ask why we want to know though," Leva said, worriedly.

"We can tell him its for a school project," suggested Nox.

"Wouldn't the teachers have told us who he was though?" said Arma.

"What if one of the older students mentioned him to us and we wanted to know who he was but we couldn't find him in any of the books at school?" said Luna. "It's half the truth," The girls nodded and sat around the table, holding hands.

"How do we do this?" Leva asked. They had never called the Immortals before, they had always called them. Suddenly, the crystal ball glowed and Darnen looked up at them.

"You called?" he said.

"How did that work?" Nox asked.

"What do you mean? You called didn't you?" Darnen asked.

"Well yeah, but a second ago we didn't know how to do it?" Nox answered.

"Hm, that is very interesting," said Darnen, "Now, what is the problem?" He gave them his full attention ready for whatever information they could supply. Sadly, his thoughts were backwards, they didn't have information, they wanted it.

"Well, we were talking to some older kids today and they mentioned a wizard named Nicholas Flamel," said Nox.

"We asked them who he was but they just giggled and refused to answer our question, so we went to the library and tried to look him up, but we couldn't find him," Luna concluded.

"So?" Darnen gave them a small, confused smile, "You want me to tell you who he is, correct?"

"Well, yes," Leva said.

Darnen's smile got bigger. "And, here I thought this was gonna be important,"

"Sorry to dissapoint you, but could you still tell us?" Nox asked.

"Well, yes, but in the future, please don't waste out time with questions like this, save it for important stuff, okay?"

"Got it," They asnwered in unison.

"Okay, well Nicholas Flamel was an alchemyst, probably one of the most famous alchemysts. Luna, I'm surprised you didn't know who he was; but no matter, any ways he was the creator of the Philosopher's stone. You know, the reason why the third floor is off limits,"

"We remember," said Arma.

"Well thats who he is, now you know. Is there any thing else? Because I must return to more pressing matters," Darnen said.

"No, thats all," said Arma. Darnen nodded and the ball went blank.

"So that means that someone tried to steal the Pilosopher's stone from Gringott's." said Leva.

"But why?" asked Nox.

"Why? The stone grants eternal life and the ability to by pass the equivalence rule for alchemy, who wouldn't want it?" said Luna.

"No, I mean, why would some one go to such lengths? No one else has been able to break into Gringotts before," said Nox. The girls looked around at eachother.

"Something is deffinitely wrong," Leva said quietly, more to herself than the others.

"What, are you guys talking about? Some one tries to steal a powerful stone that isn't there and there is a crazy person in Germany killing people and offering their hearts to a rock! Of course there is something wrong! There's always something wrong!! But we don't really need to worry about it do we?" Arma shouted.

"Yes we do!" Luna said sternly.

"Says who? That thing is in Germany and who ever tried to steal the obviously didn't get it since they stole from the wrong place!" Arma looked like she was going to blow her top.

"If that thing in Germany keeps offering hearts and releases the dark energy I'm sure it wont just be in Germany any more! And if who ever broke in Gringotts can do that then there is a chance that they break into Hogwarts too!" said Nox.

Well if they can, then why din't we warn Darnen, they could send people to look out for us, why didn't we tell him then, huh!?" said Arma.

"You know why, we discussed it before we called hims," Nox answered.

"Yeah, 'cause you guys don't trust him," said Arma with disgust.

"Not him, them and no we don't. We talked about that too," Nox argued.

"Stop! Just stop!" Leva shouted,she was crying. "This is what they want, they want us to fight, so we wont be as strong when we fight them," tears poured down her cheecks and Luna tried to comfort her.

"Shhh, no, no, its okay, we'll be okay," she soothed to her, but Leva pushed her away

"No it wont, I didn't tell you guys before, but I saw another vision in my cup at dinner last night," The others stared at her. "Their trying to make us fight, they're putting bad thoughts in our minds, we have to fight it you guys, or we'll become enemies," She stared around at them. All thoughts of the arguement washed out of them and they gathered around her in a circle.

"Whose they Leva?" asked Nox.

"I don't know, but they're bad people... maybe not even people, but they are bad, we have to stick together you guys. We have to stay strong," Her words brought them closer together than they ever had been before. Still thinking about she had said, they climbed the stairs to join the rest of the school in dinner.

Arma was the only one of the four girls who talked much. She was filling in Harry and Ron and Hermione, who was more eavesdropping than actually apart of the conversation. They whispered to eachother as quietly as they could despite the suspicious glares they were getting from Percy.

"Nicholas Flamel was the creator of the Philosopher's Stone, its special to alchemysts. It gives them powers or something and eternal life," Arma was explaining. "We think that's what was in the vault, cause we know its in the school now. Its the reason the third floor is off limits,"

"But why bring it here?" asked Harry, "And why did Hagrid refuse to tell us what is was? It makes perfect sense to me, and knowing about it doesn't put us in any more danger. I mean, you guys have known for a while, right?"

"Yeah, Darnen told us on the first night when we told him about the third floor being off limits," she answered.

"So then why couldn't he just tell us?" Harry scratched his chin thougtfully.  
"And we still don't know why Snape jinxed your broom," Hermione piped up. The other three glanced over at her.

"What does that have to do with a magic stone?" asked Ron.

"More than we might guess," Hermione answered, ignoring the tone in his voice.

"She's right, for all we know, Snape could be the one who broke into Gringotts and since Harry was with Hagrid when he got it, Snape might have thought that Harry knew more than he did," Arma said nodding her head in realisation.

"That would explain why Hagrid refused to tell us," said Harry.

"Yeah, but if he knew it was Snape, then Dumbledore would know and wouldn't he have gotten rid of Snape?" asked Ron.

"Maybe he's using the Keep your friends close and your enemies closer strategy," suggested Arma.

"That could be," Hermione trailed off thoughtfully.

Over at the Slytherin table, Nox sat quietly poking at a peice of chicken sitting on her plate.

"What's wrong Nox?" Tempest asked from across the table. Nox simply shrugged her shoulders and continued poking her food. "Oh, come on, we know something is wrong, just tell us,"

"Just stuff, I'll tell you later, when we're alone," said Nox so quietly that Ryan and Tempest had to lean towards her. They both nodded and went back to eating.

"So how was the match yesterday?" Ryan asked. He hadn't been there. Instead he had served a detention for trying to show off in the hall ways by using magic and accidently sending a suit of armor flying down the corridor to crash into two more suits of armor. Two of them had gotten pretty beat up and the thrid was completely crushed. Unfortunately, Filtch had turned the corner right when it had happend and sentenced him to a weeks worth of detention where he had to clean several school owned items by hand.

"Eventful, Harry caught the snitch in his mouth," Tempest answered. She looked over at Nox. "Where were you? I didn't manage to catch up with you guys so I got stuck with Elizabeth and Pansy," Tempest practically chocked Pansy's name, despite the fact that she was sitting only two people away from her and shot her a glare.

"Sorry, I got up really early and I met Leva and then we took a walk around the lake and then we met up with Arma and Luna, I though you were probly all ready there so I didn't look for you, sorry," she muttered again before finally taking a bite of her chicken.  
"It's okay, I didn't really pay attention to the game until the end. I was sketching," Tempest held up her big black hard cover sketch book that she took every where with her. It was filled with beautiful pictures of fantast characters and sometimes animals.

"Figures, Ryan muttered as he shoved some food into his own mouth. Tempest shot him a look but chose to ignore the comment.

Leva wasn't talking to Fidel either, even less than Nox was talking to Tempest and Ryan. She was the most shaken up of the four girls. She could remember vividly, the picture she had seen in her cup the day before.

_There had been too figures this time, still sillouettes, but she could tell that they were women. They're eyes glowed several shades of silvery red. However, they did not spread they're arms out as the last person had, instead they seemed to be sitting down across from eachother. Between them was a table where rested a bowl of water, they stared at it, entranced just as Leva was now staring into her cup. _

_"Hmmm, they are powerful aren't they?" the one on the right spoke, her voice sounded like the very earth when she spoke, it was rich and deep and sounded like the color mahogony. _

_"Yes, sister, they are, that is why we chose them isn't it?" the one on the left answered. Her words were like the tide clashing against sea cliffs. We must keep an eye on them however," _

_"Yes, if they were to get out of hand," the one on the right trailed off. _

_"We must not let that happen," the one on the left growled. "It would ruin everything we have worked for,"_

_"I know sister, I know," the one on the right tensed._

_"We must cripple them, push them apart adn then get rid of the ones we can't control," _

_"I agree, if we leave them as they are, we might lose all of them,"_

_"But how? We cannot touch them,"_

_"The mind, sister, we start at the mind, if the believe they are the ones thinking what they are, it will be easier to make them beleive us,"_

_"Place thoughts, our thoughts, in their heads, yes sister, yes, It will work," _

_They leaned in closer to the bowl and and the vison went black._

"Leva? Are you okay?" Fidel asked, lightly touching her shoulder.

"I'm fine," Leva said roboticaly.

Luna acted much the same. She didn't talk, hardly ate, and stared off into space. Padma glanced at her with concern but did not mention her strange behavior, Instead she rammbled on about a test that was coming up.

That night, the girls descided to not meet and practice their powers, they all felt tired and almost immediatly retired to bed.

For the next several weeks, the girls practiced and slept little. They wanted their powers to be at their fullest just in cause the time came. Sadly, they were still only able to manifest small amounts of energy. Their speed and acuracy however, were a different matter, they could sommon their element in under a second and miss their target only by two centimeters. Leva and Nox still had a slight problem however, when they turned off a light or made an electronic turn on they also turned on/off whatever was with in a two foot radius of it.

Because of their lack of sleep, the girls descided that weekends were meant for rest and those were the days that they slept in. Luna was also able to, after several long trips to the library, mix up an energy potion for the nights that they stayed up particularly late.

Soon they would be taking a break from their midnight sessions. The holidays for around the corner and the girls would be spending their break with the other immortals. They had a large estates resting at the peek of a mountain top. It was surrounded by forestes and, in the summer, wild flowers of all kinds.

A few days later, they were boarding the train home with over half of the rest of the school. They spent the ride to King's cross descussing the same subject that had been on their minds for weeks.

"But maybe Dumbledore doesn't know about him?" Leva suggested.

"Dumbeldore knows everything," said Arma matter-of-factly.

"Know one can know everything, Arma," said Nox. Despite Leva's warning, their tones towards eachother had become less and less sarcastic and more and more angry.

"Funny you should mention that Nox," Arma snapped back at her.

"Hey come on you guys, stop fighting, you know it upsets Leva," said Luna in a motherly tone. Both girls crossed their arms and looked deliberately in the opposite direction.

There was silence for a little while until Luna brought up a different aspect of the sitiuation. "Maybe Snape was really trying to save Harry and we got the wrong person, what if we're looking in completely the wrong direction," she suggested to the silence.

"Yeah right," said Nox, "Snape hates Harry and the rest of the teachers love him,"

"And you would know?" Arma asked angrily.

"Well, yeah, he's Harry Potter, everyone loves him, except most Slytherins," she said.

"Yet again, we don't know that unless your telling us that you can read minds now?" said Arma, still refusing to look at her.

"No, I'm just coming to a conclusion by people's behavior," said Nox.

"What ever, we still don't know," said Arma.

"Which is exactly why we should be careful, we don't know who could be listening," Leva whispered.

Finally, the trip ended and the four girls exited the train to meet Darnen with their stuff. They all piled into his Chevy and started the long, silent drive to the Immortal estate.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7: The Immortal Estate

They pulled into the dirt drive way and stopped under the canopy made for protecting their cars from the weather. They tramped inside, still silent and carried their trunks to their rooms. They stayed there the rest of the day, not wanting to extend the company of eachother. The other kids weren't their yet. May, Coro, and Rose's parents hadn't brought them yet and Rorrima and Raine wouldn't arrive for another day since they had to travel by ship.

The Mansion was beautiful. It was built of a lovely, rich colored mahogany wood. The panels around the doors and the walls were adorned with intricate carvings. It was five stories high and had over 42 rooms, including an attic, library, study (which is seperate from the library), and a very, very large basement. Outside was a court yard. It had a beautiful fountain in the shape of a pheonix. Under the foutain was a four foot deep pool where the children oftain swam, or the adults relaxed in. When the children preffered privacy from their nosey parents, they snuck off into the forest. Under the shade of tall trees were strong vines for swinging and a slow flowing river. The river was deep and even had a water fall which the kids enjoyed sliding off of into the river. Behind the water fall was a dark, damp cave. It was infested with small creatures such as bats, spiders and other creepy crallies, so the kids stayed away from it. Instead they played in a tree house atop the tallest tree in the forest. It was part of a large obstacle coarse used to keep them in shape and teach them combat. The elders beleived that all the immortals should know how to fight if one day they could not use magic or magic was unhelpful.

Thankfully, the rest of the house was empty besides Darnen, a few elders, and the cook (who was also an immortal, she had the mark of the fessent). They all beleived the girls to be tired and so descided to not desturb them.

The girls were tired, but not so much that they needed to sleep. They were all tired of eachother, Nox and Arma in particular. Leva's vision didn't seem to have any affect on them, they just kept fighting more and more. Unfortunately for Leva and Luna, they didn't know what to do about it and settled with meeting eachother in secret to discuss the matter.

"They're just going to keep fighting no matter what we do," said Luna.

"But, we have to try something, if we don't, someone's going to die..." Leva didn't have to say who she thought it was, it was obvious that it was either going to be Arma who died, or the rest of them. Kita, Leva's cat, who had been sleeping on Leva's pillow quietly, suddenly jumped and hissed, then sprinted from the room. The two girls followed her out with their eyes, but didn't get up.

"We have to be able to do something, maybe there's a spell some where that blocks your mind," Luna suggested.

"But its probably really hard, how are we gonna be able to pull something like that off?"

"I don't know, I need to look it up in the library, you wanna come with me?" Luna stood up and walked toward the door, she had her hand on the knob when Leva stopped her.

"No, I think we should stay in our rooms for now,"

"Why?"

"They think we're tired, so if you go down, they'll know your not and then they'll think that the rest of us aren't and then they'll know that something is up,"

"Well, maybe Arma is right, maybe we can trust them, maybe we need the adults to solve this for us,"

"No, I don't think so, I just... have this _feeling_ we can't go to them, we can't,"

Luna sighed and sat back down. "If you say so, but first thing tomorrow, I'm heading down there,"

Mean while, Nox and Arma layed on their bed staring blankly at the ceiling. 'Why can't she see what they aren't telling us?' Nox thought. 'How can she trust them so willingly even though they obviously keeping things from us. But what aren't they telling us? They said that the child obviously killed Carmender, but they also said that they went to our school. If they're at our school, how do they kill Carmender? And how did they know there was a child? They probably saw it's Aura. Its aura. Darnen said it had a disgusting aura, but I haven't felt any gross aura's around school. If it was half demon, then wouldn't it be easy to sense? Maybe it just had a bad aura when it was a baby, and then it grew more human when it grew up. How old would it be now? Probably my age, since all this happened when I was born. Hmmmm, I should do some research about demons tomorrow. But I'm tired now.' And with that, she rolled over and went to sleep.

Arma was thinking about the same situation. 'Why are they so mistrusting? Haven't the Immortals taken care of us since we were little? And this whole demon child thing, maybe they aren't telling us something for a reason. Like Harry knowing about the Philospher's stone, maybe if we knew too much someone would try to kill us. Yeah, that's gotta be the reason. But they did tell us that the child was at school and in Germany at the same time, that is a little weird. But so what? We're just kids so we can't possibly handle something like that.' Her eyelids drooped and her thoughts became less and less logical until she fell asleep.

_A beautiful woman sat on the edge of a throne. It was made from the entwining roots of an ancient tree. she stared down at Arma and Nox, who sat cross legged at her feet. Her long red hair reached her seat and flowed down to the dirt floor of the dimly lit chamber. _

_"Don't listen to them, my darlings," She said. Her voice was crystal clear and seemed to pull them in from the first word. "They want to control you, but you must fight them, I'll help you, but I wont be around for much longer and you will need to learn to help yourselves," Her eyes sparkled in the gaslight from the lanterns fastened to the walls. "Keep your friends close my dears. There are more of them than you think, but tred lightly, friends can turn to enemies quickly," she bent over to pet them both on the head and rub their cheeks lovingly. She glowed with an inner light and it passed down her arms and through Arma and Nox and then faded._

The next morning, Luna woke first and headed down to the private library of the estate. It was cold, but not wanting to wake anyone, she left the fireplace unlit and set about searching the shelves for spell books or something on mind control. She searched almost an hour with finding nothing but Legilimancy, which didn't seem like the same thing. The books described it as more a way to read minds then control them. The only other thing was Imperio, which was an unforgivable curse and it enslaved the body, not the mind.

Arma met her down there after that first hour had been used up. She walked into the library, shivered, and promptly lit the kindle in the fire place on fire. She crossed the room to the great stone fireplace, and set two logs over the burning kindle.

"Arma?" Luna called softly. Arma jumped in surprise and dropped a third log onto the stone flagons in front of the fireplace.

"Oh, hey Luna, listen, I had this weird dream last night," Luna drew up closer to her as she lowered her voice to a whisper. "Me and Nox were in it, and there was this strange lady. She had really long hair, and she said pretty much the same thing as Leva. You know, about her vision, anyway, this lady told us that she was gonna look out for us and, this is the weirdest part, she touched mine and Nox's face and then she got all glowy and then the glow traveled through her and into us. And, what's even weirder, I woke up this morning and I don't feel mad at you guys any more! I actually kinda agree with you!" Luna scrunched her eyebrows together in a frown.

"That is strange," said Luna.

"No kidding its strange!" Luna turned around and Arma looked up to see Nox standing rather close to them. Why hadn't they heard her come in? "I had the same dream, and I'm not mad at Arma any more," she said.

"Well, at least you guys aren't argueing," Luna said, she brightened and she smiled.

"Now let's see, I was gonna research demons wasn't I?" Nox said as she walked up to a tall book shelf.

"Demons? But Nox, why?" asked Luna.

"Well that's what started this whole mess isn't it?" said Arma. "A demon,"

"My thoughts exactly," said Nox.

"Ya know if they're not telling us something, would they really let us read about it?" said Luna.

"That's a good point,"Nox scratched her chin in thought.

"Maybe we should wait till we get back to school," suggested Arma.

Luna nodded. "We might half to," The girls heard the front door open and familiar voices shouting:

"We're home! Every body wake up! We're Hoooooo-ooooome!!"

"Raine!!" Nox sprinted through the doorway and down the hall, Arma and Luna right behind her. Nox met his smiling face when she came into the entrance hall. She stared at him for a moment, confused about what she was seeing. Raine didn't look any _different_ but he looked similar. _To what?_ Of coarse he would look _familiar_ she had known him all her life; but it wasn't _familiarity_ she noticed, it was _similarity_. Like he looked like someone else she knew; but who could it be? Raine looked up and his golden eyes met her red ones.

"Nox! Arma! Luna! Its good to see you guys! Where's Leva?" said Raine. Behind him, Rorrim was pulling off his coat and hanging it on the coat rack with Kaleb. Kaleb had short, stylishly slicked back golden hair. He had high cheek bones and a strong chin. His eyes were a briliant blue that sparkled in the sunlight.

"She's upstairs. I think she's still sleeping," said Luna.

"Well wake her up, Coro, May, and Rose'll be here soon too," said Kaleb. Luna nodded and rushed upstairs to wake Leva. Kaleb turned to Arma and Nox. "So how was Hogwarts? I hear the third floor is off limits,"

"Yeah, its guarding the Philosopher's stone," said Arma excitedly.

"That's sounds cool and ominous, what is it?" asked Raine.

"It's an alchemy tool," Rorrim spoke up for the first time. Raine looked back at him quizzically. "Alchemysts, you know, they turn stuff into gold... that kind of thing," Raine nodded is understanding and Rorrim continued. "It's a stone that grants eternal life and endless power to alchemysts," Raine's mouth formed in an O shape and turned back to the girls.

"That's cool, we're learning about the dark arts," said Raine excitedly.

"Raine! You shouldn't be excited at something like that," the girls jumped and spun around to face Kayla who had approached them from behind. Kayla was one of the elders. Her mark was that of the snake. She didn't _look_ like an elder, but none of them did. She had long curly hair tied up in an intricate bun at the back of her head. It was the color of the sunset on a summer night. Her and the other elders all looked like they could be twenty years old, when really they were close to one hundred. Elders didn't age much, if not at all. The Immortals clan was started sometime around the year 100 A.D. so they've been around for a really really long time. The elders weren't the only ones who lived for a long time though. Generally speaking, witches and wizards lived much longer than muggles, but being marked as an immortal, meant that you lived for a very, very, very long time. The oldest member, Jacko, who was actually too old to be an elder now, was close to three centuries old. He looked like he was eighty though and cook (the kids just called her cook) kept telling them that he would kick the bucket soon enough. Jacko liked to brag about his age, but the elders knew that he had only lived so long because he had chosen cowardness in great times of need. They wouldn't speak of what times, however.

Sorry, Kayla, but it's just so cool," Raine trailed off when he saw her glare.

"Don't worry, Kayla, kids will be kids," said Kaleb.

"Soon they will not be children, however, Kaleb, so they must practice acting like adults. Much of the world's fate will rest upon their shoulders, and they must be ready when that day comes," and with that, Kayla marched off to the kitchens, her posture erect and her nose stuck in the air.

"Here she is," said Luna as she dragged a still half asleep Leva down the stairs. A black furball shot down the stairs infront of them and immediately started to attack the coat rack.

"What's going on? Kita stop that..." she mummbled, trying to rub her eyes.

"Oh is this your nasty furball?" asked Kaleb. He snatched up Kita and tickled her forhead, calming her to a purr.

"Hey Leva!" Raine greeted.

"Hi Raine, hi Rorrim," Leva yawned her greeting.

"Hello," Rorrim said quietly.

"Who's hungry?" Kaleb piped up, he headed off to the kitchens with the children following behind him. Darnen was already in there, talking avidly to Kayla with an untouched cinnamon roll sitting on his plate. They both looked up when Kaleb and the kids entered the room and fell silent. Kayla nodded to Darnen and pushed past the children still clogging the doorway. Kaleb gave Darnen a puzzled look but didn't get to vioce his confusion. At that moment a hearty, heavily accented voice filled the room.

"Chilllldren!" Cook said, spreading out her arms and rolling her R's in her transylvanian accent. "I 'ave missed you so!" She pulled them all into a hug and squeazed them until they thought they might explode. "'o's 'ungry?" she asked and began busying herself around the kitchen. "Eat your food, you are too skinny as it is!" she snapped at Darnen playfully. She herself was rather pudgy, displaying her love for food. Her dark hair was kept in a tight bun at the base of her neck. That kept it out of the food, but when she wasn't working she let it down. It was short, but it beautifully framed her face.

"Sorry," Darnen mummbled through a mouthful of cinnimon roll. The children and Kaleb joined him at the table and soon the room was filled with cheery voices and laughter.

"How was Durmstrange?" asked Luna, "Was it cold?" Raine nodded vigorously while he chewed the cinnimon roll Cook had just placed on his plate.

"Slow down chillllld, or you'll choke," scolded Cook.

"Yeah it was cold, it started snowing in September!" said Rorrim.

"We had tons of snow ball fights!" said Raine after he swallowed his roll.

"Sounds like fun," said Nox.

"Did anything weird happen?" asked Leva, who had finally woken up.

"Well, Karkeroff, our head master, is a little excentric, but other than that..." said Rorrim.

"Other than that... Victor Krum, the seeker for the Bulgarian Quidditch team, goes to our school!" Raine shouted excitedly.

"For serious!?" Leva and Arma shouted in unison. Darnen jumped back in astonishment.

"My Jesus, crazy fan girls on the loose," he rolled his eyes to Kaleb who simply smiled.

"When are the others gonna get here?" asked Leva.

"They should be here any minute, be patient the snow is rougher this year so it takes longer to get all the way up this mountain," said Darnen.

Leva groaned with anticipation. "I wanna go sledding,"

"Not until after a combat session," said Kaleb. At that, every one else groaned.

"But we just got back from school. can't we do something _fun_?" Nox wined.

Kaleb shook his head. "We have to keep you guys in shape and slacking off will not be tolerated. You've had a break from these sessions for three months so stop complaining," He bent back down to his roll and continued eating.

"If we're at school most of the year, how are we supposed to keep up with our sessions?" asked Rorrim.

"That is a very good question, I'll have to speak to the elders about it," said Darnen.

"RORRIM!" the other children wined and groaned with disspleasure.

"Sorry," Rorrim mummbled, turning bright red.

The children rushed back into the house huffing and puffing and wanting hot chocolate. They had just spent the better part of and hour circuit training in the snow and climbing ropes and swinging from trees.

"I think my fingers went numb," Raine wined.

"Well, your most likely going to be doing this a few years so you better get used to it," said Kaleb, patting him on the back. The Cook brought hot chocolate out to the parlor for them while they warmed up and waited for May, Coro, and Rose to arrive. They didn't have to wait long for soon there came a tap tap tapping at the front door. Unsurprisingly, due to how big the mansion was, no one heard it so the occupants of the door step resorted to ringing the obnoxiously loud doorbell.

"Finally," Kaleb muttered as he followed the hasty group out to the entrance hall. Leva pulled open the heavy front door to release a blast of cold air followed by nine figures heavily bundled against the cold.

They all stepped into the hall, the snow melting right off them onto the floor in the warmth of a near by fire place. The kids helped unwrap the three smallest figures to reveal Coro, May and a red nosed Rose. She sniffled softly and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

"Oh, Rose, use a hanky," A pretty woman with hazel eyes bent to hand her a lacy hankercheif. The sound of her blowing her nose reminded May of a kazoo. She sounded so cute and innocent even when she was sick.

"Luckies, you just missed training," Leva said with great jealousy.

"Oh but they wont for too long, as soon as you've all warmed up yuor to head back outside," Kaleb instructed.

"But Rose has a terrible cold!" The lady with the hanky exclaimed. Her name was Merith and she was Roses mother, explaining her extreme concern for the small child.

"I'm sure that Cook has something to help her cold, she is an immortal, she'll live through the cold," Kaleb led the group back unto the kitchen where Cook had refilled their mugs and poor new ones for the new arrivals.

"Mmmm, hot chocolate," Coro inhaled deeply over his mug and tipped it into his mouth.

An hour or so later, Kaleb dragged three unwilling children out into the snow for training. Meanwhile, the other kids got to work building a large snow fort.

Half of the fort was the cavernous underside of a tall evergreen, its bottom branches started high on the trunk; but the ends were weighed down by snow, making a cone shape. The kids dug out snow and dirt and piled it it against the branches. This gave them more space where they coulod huddle together and talk and eat the cinnimon rolls they had snuck from the kitchen.

"It's awefully warm in here considering its almost entirely made of snow," Raine commented. Leva, Nox, and Luna glanced over at Arma and she grinned. They were all scrunched in a circle. Nox between Arma, who was indeed very warm, and Raine, who was actually rather cold, next to Raine sat Luna, then Rorrim, the Leva who was also by Arma. Rorrim caught this little exchange and stared at them for few moments.

"Can we trust you?" Leva asked with a serious expression. She leaned close to Rorrim and waited for his answer.

"With your life," he said. Raine looked up, puzzled as he sat with his mouth gaping open over his already half eaten cinnimon roll.

"Has anything... weird happened to you guys?" asked Nox. "Like, not normal weird?"

"Such as?" asked Rorrim. Raine just sat with his mouth hanging open. His cinnimon roll was now enshrouded in a cloud of fog from his breath.

"Such as finding out you can do something your not supposed to be able to do," Arma blurted out. Rorrim and Raine glanced at eachother.

"You mean like this?" Raine gathered a handful of snow from the walls and crunched it together with both his palms. He breathed into a it and pulled his hands apart again. Sitting on his right hand was a rose made of ice.

"Did you do that?" aske Luna. Raine nodded vergurously.

"Your Ice," Nox realized. 'Thats why he was so cold' she thought.

"Well... yes," he said simply. "And Rorrim is water." The girls looked at eachother.

"Does Kaleb know?" asked Luna.

"Yeah, we told him as soon as we found out, but what're you guys?" asked Raine. "I'm assuming your elements too right?"

"Yeah," Leva piped up. "I'm lighting, Luna's air, Nox's darkness, and Arma is fire,"

"Which explains why its so warm in here," Rorrim muttered. "You guys must of told Dranen then, am I right?" the girls nodded.

"But thats not the weirdest part," Leva continued. "You remember when Carmender..."

"Yeah, we remember," Rorrim said quickly when Leva trailed off.

"Well, Darnen said that an ex-elder killed her, or the son of an ex-elder," said Leva.

"What? We didn't hear this part of the story," said Raine, frowning. The girls launched into an explanation about what happened and their suspitions of the Immortals.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8:

The sitting room was buzzing with activity. Most of the Immortals had made it to the estate that day. They sat around on comfy chairs discussing plans for the upcoming holiday. Cook had even come out of the kitchen to write down the dinner plan. The children lay stretched out on the floor, around a game of wizard chess. Luna and Rorrim were the opponents and had been working on this particular game for an hour or so. Both of them took long, thoughtful turns which made the game rather boring to watch, however, Nox and Arma's narrations made up for that.

Outside, a storm had picked up turning the windows completely white and forcing Kaleb to end May, Coro, and Rose's training session and the other three's secret meeting. It was just now letting up but Kaleb was in an animated discussion with a few other elders.

"What are we going to do if he comes back?" Menthar, Coro's father asked in a hushed tone. The rest of the room got quiet and the children looked up, sensing the change of mood.

"Children, up stairs," Kayla ordered them.

"I thought you said we were supposed to act like adults," Raine said stubbornly. "Upstairs," she said again.

"How are we supposed to do that if you don't treat us like adults?" Raine continued. Kayla simply stared down at him until he broke and trudged upstairs. The other children silently folded up the chess game and followed him.

"What could they be talking about down there?" Nox asked, feeling slightly frustrated.

"'What are we going to do when he comes back?' That's what Menthar said," Luna sat on a dusty stool with her ankles crossed nicely. They had done exactly what Kayla had told them to do: gone upstairs, all the way upstairs. After ditching Coro, May, and Rose in their rooms. Not wanting them to hear their suspicions because they were unsure of their loyalties.

"Who could _he _be?" asked Rorrim.

"Well, the Alchemist ex-elder was a girl... so... maybe they're talking about the demon she loved?" Arma suggested.

"Did he die?" asked Nox.

"I don't remember," Arma answered her.

"They could be talking about her son," Leva suggested. They all nodded thoughtfully but didn't add any other thoughts on the subject.

"Can we contact each other through those orb things?" asked Rorrim. They all smiled up at each other, loving the idea of communicating behind the adults' backs.

"Wait, they might be able to listen in on our conversations that way," said Luna. "Since it's linked here too."

"Well we'll just have to check the library for communicating then, there'd be no reason to hide that," a smirk stretched across Nox's mouth and up toward her ear. She looked up at Raine. "This calls for that stealth plan we came up with last summer," He smirked back.

"Kaleb would be proud if he knew how well we put his lessons to use,"

Unfortunately, to reach the library from the upstairs rooms, one had to cross through the sitting room, that is, if you went through the house. Nox and Raine had discovered, during an evening of supposed punishment, that if one was a good climber any room with windows could be reached from the outside. The mansion had a mild covering of vines over its surface. Strong enough for a few children to climb around, but not thick enough to make the mansion look grodey.

Nox smiled as she pulled the latch to her window and opened it wide. The cold stung their faces and they all shuffled back slightly.

"A bit cold don't you think?" Leva shivered. Nox smiled again.

"Arma," she smiled with her. Arma placed her hands over Leva's cheeks and concentrated for a moment. Immediately, Leva's skin glowed to a red, the heat from Arma radiated off her.

"The hands to," Nox directed, "So they don't freeze up while we're climbing," Arma repeated the ritual to everyone save for Raine. One by one, they crawled through the window Nox had just opened, her and Raine leading the way. At first, they headed down a floor until they were to the immediate left of the sitting room window. Carefully and quietly, they made their way farther to the left, past the study, until they could reach the library windows. These windows were different. They were larger and pushed upward, however, they were still locked from the inside. Raine called down the row of kids. Now that they were outside, without any warm clothing, Arma's magic was starting to wear off.

"Any ideas?" asked Raine hopefully.

"How 'bout we start with standing firmly on the ground since this is the bottom floor," Nox suggested. Everyone followed suite without objections.

"So what do we do now? It's locked," said Raine. Luna pushed him gently out of the way and leaned against the glass. She took a large gulp of air and blew as hard as she could straight at the latch to the window.

With the tinniest bit of resistance, it snapped open and they quickly pushed open the window and Nox and Luna scrambled inside. The others were about to follow when they heard multiple feet rush to the closed door. Nox and Luna spun around, only then noticing that Luna's gust had also over turned the table and chairs and anything that had been sitting upon it. With another gust of wind, Luna sent the other kids soaring away from the window back outside. Nox grabbed her hand and the library door burst open.

Kayla rushed into the room, Menthar and Kaleb just behind her. They ignored the over turned tables for now, more concerned with who or what had knocked them over. Staring around the room with her sharp eyes, Kayla's attention was alerted by the open window. The very tip of her tongue could be seen through her slightly parted lips, as if she were tasting the air.

Nox and Luna, still holding hands, scrunched themselves against the wall, trying to become as small as possible. They watched as Kayla stormed to the window. She leaned out it, looking for anything or anyone who could have opened it. Luckily, she came up with nothing and simply closed the window, locking it again.

"No one out there?" asked Menthar. Kayla shook her head darkly.

"Search the room," Her tongued seemed to stretch into the air, like a snake's. Menthar and Kaleb righted the table chairs while Kayla stood tasting the air over and over again. Finally she rested her tongue and stopped scouring the room.

"There's nothing here," she announced and exited the room briskly, leaving the door open for Menthar and Kaleb. They looked at each other questioningly.

"Nothing here?" said Menthar, "then what the hell knocked this over?" he motioned to the chairs and table.

"Sure as hell wasn't the wind," Kaleb shrugged. He too exited the room with a reluctant Menthar. Nox finally let go of Luna's hand, and let herself breath.

"She couldn't sense us..." Luna looked at Nox, puzzled.

"That was me," said Nox. She turned back to the window, unlocked it and once again had it open. She leaned out as best she could considering her size and called to the others. "We're clear, you can come out now," All of them dropped to the ground at once, almost taking out Nox's head and landed with a muffled crunch on the ground. They scrambled through the window and closed it quickly behind them. Arma was already working on heating up the room when Luna asked how they had managed to stay hidden.

"Made it too cold for her to sense anything," Raine explained. They kept their voices down just incase the adults were waiting on the other side of the door.

"So, communication spells..." without wasting any time, Luna hunted down the communication section. Luckily, the library didn't have a librarian to keep it organized. The books themselves were enchanted to replace themselves where they belonged if they were left in the wrong place for too long. It made house keeping easier but was a little annoying when you had to chase a book you were in the middle of reading, down to the library because it had decided that it was gone for too long. Luna pulled out a newer looking book titled "Modern Magical Ways of Communicating". The publish date was from 50 years ago.

"Not _exactly_ modern, but this'll do," Luna whispered as she pulled a chair out to sit down.

"Maybe we should take it back upstairs incase they walk in here, or worse our rooms and find out we're gone," Arma suggested. The others agreed and after Arma heated everyone again they made their way back to Nox's room as carefully as they could. As soon as they were securely inside, they piled on and around Nox's bed with Luna in the middle, the book opened on her lap. After a few minutes of reading the book aloud, the group found a simple spell they could perform on various objects. The objects worked as a walky talky by saying an incantation: speakus. If someone on one end needed to speak to someone, the other end would light up and vibrate, letting the other person know they needed to speak. Nox rummaged around in her closet for anything they could use. She found an old hand carved box she had put "treasures" in when she was younger. She pulled out two pendants and placed them on the floor next to each other. Luna sat in front of them with the book open and cast the spell. The pendants glowed for a moment and returned to normal.

"Let's try it out," Raine picked up one of the pendants and left the room, closing the door behind him. The others stared expectantly at its brother. It glowed and vibrated, dancing about the floor. Everyone cheered and clapped but quieted when Rorrim answered it.

"Can you hear me?" he asked.

"Yup," responded Kaleb. He opened the door and entered the room with a guilty looking Raine. "What're you guys doing?" he asked incredulously.

"We wanna be able to talk to each other when we go back to school," Leva said innocently. Kaleb rolled his eyes.

"Why don't you just use the orbs?"

"We wanted to find our own way," Nox said. "It's more fun that way, cause we're almost breaking rules but not quite," Kane smiled.

"Oh, you guys remind me of me, Darnen and Garb when we were your age,"

"GARB?" Nox, Raine and Arma all looked disgusted. "We remind you of GARB?" Kane chuckled.

"He actually used to be cool," he tossed the pendant on the floor in the middle of group and then headed towards the door. "Don't anything stupid, ok?" and with that he closed the door and left them alone.

"Well, now we know they work," said Rorrim.

"…_Garb_?" Raine, Nox and Arma said together.


End file.
